Use these general steps to configure a printer before it's installed. When in doubt, reference the manual that came with your printer.

1. Start by unpacking the printer from its box (if it isn't already). Connect the power supply to the printer and don't forget to plug it into a power source.
   
2. Insert any ink cartridges inside your printer. Don't forget to pull the protective tab off the ink cartridge.
   
3. Load a stack of paper into the paper tray and make sure to shut the tray all the way when you've finished.
   
4. Chances are that when you bought a printer you had a good idea of how it was going to connect to your PC. All consumer-level printers connect to your PC via either its parallel or USB ports. Here's a graphic displaying the difference between the two.
   
5. Locate the correct cable, either parallel or USB, and connect it to your printer.
   
6. The final step is to connect the other end of that cable to your PC's parallel or USB ports. At this time you should notice Plug-n-Play trying to install the correct printer drivers.
   
7. Let the wizard walk you through installing the drivers.
   
8. Try printing a test page after the drivers are installed.
   

If Plug-n-Play doesn't prompt you to install anything after you've connected the printer cable to your PC, then this feature may be disabled in your BIOS. That's OK. There's another way to install the correct drivers.