Locally connected Printer shows as offline on Windows 7 network after initially working

Hi nadiacharmed,

you have two options:

1, to set your router to assign a predefined IP to a specific client. This is done by providing the pair of the MAC address of the client and the desired IP. The actual workaround depends on your router model, but it's certain that you will have to log in to your router's administrative page.

2, is to set an IP in Windows for the network adapter with which you connect to the network. This IP should be outside of the routers DHCP pool (which is a range of IPs the router assigns to clients requesting an IP). To determine this range you should again log in to your router's administrative page.

I suggest you search for a manual for your router model, or ask some friend who knows how to do it!

Bence

Greetings,

I decided to write a post, because it seems that I could manage to solve the printing problem which I was struggling with for 3 days now. Hope this might help others, so I' ll try to be clear.

The problem:

On a network exist an older PC with WinXP 32 bit installed on it via USB there is an ancient Xerox PE220 connected to it. The PC has static IP. On the network there are 5 other PCs: 2 WinXP 32 bit, 2 Win7 Pro 32 bit, and a Win7 Pro 64 bit. The printer is shared on the network. Until recently every PC could print without problems.

Then suddenly the Win7 64 bit computer stopped being able to print. Note that only the 64 bit Win7 had the problem, so it might be a hidden 64 bit driver problem on Win7.

I tried reinstalling the printer as network printer, it seemed to install normally but I couldn't print (message was something like "no printer installed") with any of the programs, altough in Devices and Printers the printer appeared and was selected as default.

Wich led to the solution was the second approach (which I found on some other forum):

Step 1: I clicked add printer, selected local printer, added  a new local port. This port should be //<address_of_PC_with_printer>/<printer_share_name> (in my case //192.168.1.21/X_PE220). Note that it may work if you don't specify the actual IP address but the name of the PC. Windows should resolve this to the current IP address of the PC, so it should work even if you don't have a static IP (when using DHCP).

After this I was able to print, but when I restarted Win7 the printer showed offline and any print just appeared in the print schedule list.

So Step 2: was as Umesh P suggested in Method 3, to click Printer in print schedule list menu and uncheck the row referring to use offline printing (sorry if the menu and window names are not entirely correct, but we don't have Win7 in english). With this even after reboot the printer shows online automatically (so no need to repeat Step 2 upon every reboot).

(Step 3: I don't know if it had to do anything with the solution, but I also installed Microsoft's kb2713128 hotfix as suggested on an other forum. I suggest you only install it if Step1-2 didn't solve the problem.)

I still don't know if this will be a permanent solution, but it works for now.

I really hope Microsoft will somehow fix this bug because it clearly isn't acceptable to spend this much time on a problem, that shouldn't even exist and didn't exist in previous versions!

Finally I'd like to thank to all you people - and especially Umesh P - who posted so that I could solve this issue by reading throug the topic!

Good luck to everyone sharing the above described problem, hope I could help by summerizing,

Bence

Hi there,

I am a novice when it comes to IP addresses etc.  Any chance you could explain how to insert a static address via a router please??

Thanks:)