Printer Off Line

Graueradler

Graueradler

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Graueradler
I have a printer attached to a Vista desktop via USB where it works fine. I have printed to it in the past from my Win 7 laptop over our Wi-Fi network but can't anymore. Printer still works fine on the desktop and shows that it is shared. The printer shows on the laptop but shows that it is offline. I can't find a menu with an option to put it online. The control panel Devices and Printers menu doesn't seem to have any helpful options.

Any suggestions?
 
Try deleting the printer on the laptop and adding it again.
 
PFM - I just went to try your suggestion and found that it had fixed itself. This condition lasted several days. Guess I should have checked again before I posted. It did do an update and re-boot. Maybe that did it.

Thanks for yur suggestion.
 
Had the problem occur again today but the fix turned out to be a reboot of the wi-fi router. The printer is a wireless printer and would print from one computer but not from my laptop. The laptop insisted that the printer was offline even though, on the control panel, it was set online. The laptop was accessing the internet through the router just fine. The printer troubleshooter insisted that the printer was turned off even though it wasn't.

The solution came when I turned on a third computer which then could not access the internet. The connection troubleshooter indicated that it couldn't get a valid IP address from the router. Rebooting the router fixed everything.
 
Graueradler said:
PFM - I just went to try your suggestion and found that it had fixed itself. This condition lasted several days. Guess I should have checked again before I posted. It did do an update and re-boot. Maybe that did it.

Thanks for yur suggestion.
Click to expand...

Yep, it'll keep happening. It is a maddening problem. Every other time I try to print from my wife's Dell Inspiron, I have to delete the printer and reinstall it.
 
In many cases of problems printing to network printers, the culprit may be changing IP addresses. If the printer isn't setup with a static IP, it can get assigned a different address because of many reasons. Re-adding the printer works because it gets setup with the new IP address, but may go away again the next time there is a power outage or even a router reboot.
 
CT4ME said:
In many cases of problems printing to network printers, the culprit may be changing IP addresses. If the printer isn't setup with a static IP, it can get assigned a different address because of many reasons. Re-adding the printer works because it gets setup with the new IP address, but may go away again the next time there is a power outage or even a router reboot.
Click to expand...

In this case, the printer is connected via USB to the Vista machine, so it would be the machine's IP that is changing. Assigning that machine a static LAN IP that is the same as its current dynamic IP (when the printer is working properly, of course) would be a quick-and-dirty fix for that problem, if that's what's happening.

A better fix, if the printer is network capable, would be to remove it from the Vista machine and set it up as a standard network printer with a static LAN IP. That usually is a trouble-free configuration.

Rich
 
Thanks for the input. Looks like I'll be figuring out how to assign static IP addresses on the LAN. I forgot to mention that between events, I had disconnected the USB connection between the printer and the Vista machine and put the printer totally on Wi-Fi.
 
I don't know if the issue I had is similar to yours. I had an issue where my home printer which is on my home network would not printer when more than one computer was connected to the network. I looked for a fix for months with no luck. Then I came across something on one of the tech boards and the suggestion fixed my issue ever since. No more re-installing anything.

The suggestion was to put a checkmark in one of the options in the Printer Properties window called "ENABLE BI-DIRECTIONAL SUPPORT".

See attachment.

Hope that helps you.
 

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Graueradler said:
Thanks for the input. Looks like I'll be figuring out how to assign static IP addresses on the LAN. I forgot to mention that between events, I had disconnected the USB connection between the printer and the Vista machine and put the printer totally on Wi-Fi.
Click to expand...

Well... then the printer is network capable (at least over WiFi, and possibly over Ethernet, the latter of which would be my personal preference).

In the setup dialog for the WiFi on the printer, there's probably an option for "static" or "fixed" IP. Choose a fourth octet higher than you're ever likely to need for anything else, maybe something like 192.168.0.200, assuming that your local network uses 192.168.0.xxx.

The DNS server and gateway you enter in the printer's network setup panel should be your router's local IP address. The subnet is probably 255.255.255.0. You can find out the router's address by typing IPCONFIG in the Windows command line.

The gateway address should be your router's IP address unless you have some sort of unusual network setup. Use the same first three octets for the printer's IP information (for example, 192.168.0.xxx), and assign the fourth to some unused octet between the highest one currently in use and 254 (for example, x.x.x.200).

Finally, point all the other devices to the printer's new static IP, and you're in like flynn.

Rich

EDIT: Some routers also have a way to always assign the same IP to a given device. Usually it's called "Reserved IPs" in the router setup. If your router has that functionality, it would be an easier way to accomplish the same thing.
 
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