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

Anonymous

Ok, have checked similar threads wihich got no successful answers.

I have a PC with Epson printer connect directly via USB. Print driver installed correctly. Works fine.

Windows 7 Ultimate (32 bit) no security other than windows firewall and microsoft security essentials.

Laptop connected wirelessly to PC. On same network and homegroup, file and media sharing all working fine.

Laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate (32 bit) same security as PC.

When I add a network printer it finds printer on PC and correctly installs driver etc. Printer appears in devices and will print the first couple of times.

However, by the next day the network printer shows up as "offline" in the print spooler on the laptop. Documents simply stack up.

The PC does not go to sleep and is left on all of the time except for the monitor which is switched off. Printer works fine on PC, indeed with docs stuck on the laptop I can still print directly from the PC - even this does not show the printer as online on the laptop.

Have checked that the printer spooler on laptop is running and set to automatic.

Epson unable/unwilling to help - have found a similar thread with no answer - anybody any guesses as to what to try?

Many thanks

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Anonymous

I had a similar problem and for me the Problem is with the EPSON driver.

My printer was connected wirelessly to my network, I had IP address and could ping it but WIN 7 showed it as OFFLINE.

I then went and had a look at the printer driver, (start, Devices and printer, selected the epson printer then under printer management, customise printer, ports then configure port)

And noticed that for Standard TCP/IP Port it was pointing to a different IP than that what my printer currently had. I edited it to match what the printer was and it came ONLINE.

When you turn your printer off, its IP address goes back in your routers pool to be reassigned.

The Epson windows driver still has the old IP. You turn your printer on and your router happens to give it a different IP from last time. It now doesn't match with what the Epson driver stored before and tells you it is OFFLINE.

For me, rather than changing the IP in the driver each time this happend I assigned a static IP (fixed host ) address in my router to match my printers MAC address. This way it always gives my printer the same address everytime and no more fake OFFLINE messages appear in Windows.

This is an Epson driver problem, not a windows problem.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Set the IP address of the printer to a static address as stated earlier in this thread. If you add the printer again by browsing the network, the Standard TCP/IP port will only work as long ast the printer retains the same IP. If the print device support DNS or WNS name registration you can add a Standard TCP/IP Port using the hostname rather than a transient IP address for DHCP enabled print devices.

Alan Morris Windows Printing Team; Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here: http://support.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?adv=1

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88 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-05-26T14:44:38+00:00

Heres a question for you. Do you use any hard drive encryption. We are forced to use Credant here where I work. Every time it is installed it kills the Network Printers - shows them offline. Like you I can get the status/ping, etc but cannot print. If I attempt to add a new printer after Credant is installed I get the following error:

Cannot load the TCP/IP Printer port wizard.

Very Frustrating because the group that is responsible for Credant swears that it is not the culprit but testing shows that it is.

Thanks,

Howard
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Anonymous

2010-05-18T15:53:52+00:00

We work off a domain at work. I print from my Win 7 laptop to a number of networked computers via CAT5 cable; no wireless. Each prints to a "standard TCP/IP port". One of them (Toshiba eS452) exhibits the same behavior noted above and the solution to date has been to reinstall the drivers. The others (all happen to be vintage HP lasers) work fine all the time using the same old drivers that work on all of the XP machines.

I can 'see' the Toshiba, ping it, get files off its hard drive, but it shows as "offline". Can't actually print to it. Checking / unchecking the 'use offline box' provides no relief. This behavior only manifests itself on Win 7 OS computers which are all connected the same way. WinXP boxes are working fine; printer works sweet once you reinstall the printer driver on the Win7 box.

So, we have some printers that work fine and others that don't. It's bizarre and surprising to me that there isn't a solution out there apart from removing and adding back the printer every day but that is a 'fix' until something better comes along.

I agree w/ Amfitheatre that because the only change is the OS, then blaming the driver is a weak argument but one I would make if I worked at Msoft. Can't really blame them right? Certainly someone at Msoft works in some windowless basement and connects dozens of printers to ensure they work as they test the new O/S. And if they did, this behavior would not have appeared until the next day when the printer had gone to sleep and moved to the zombie 'offline' state. So they could have tested it but missed it making the "not-it" argument even stronger.

Anyway, it's a bug of some kind that some person way smarter than I am needs to check out for us. I'm glad I'm not alone, but sad there isn't a fix. It's like a support group for VD; sucks there's no cure but hey, you're not alone.
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Anonymous

2010-05-16T11:28:59+00:00

How can you be so sure it is an Epson driver problem? I have the problem with both an OKI laser printer and a HP ink printer. I have it on two different computers, one with Win7 Home Premium and one with Win 7 Ultimate. I never had it with Win 2000 or with Win XP Pro or with Vista. So my logic suggests this is NOT an Epson Driver problem, but something within Win 7.

It happens every time I want to use a different printer on the network. As long as I stick to one printer, all is OK, but switch printers, and I have to uninstall and the current printer as the default device. Kind of negates the idea of having networked printers.

It seems to me that when something goes wrong after a change, and all was well before that change, then it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the change is the cause of the problem.

However, I am not a computer expert, just a long suffering end user. Maybe the computer experts can come up with a solution, and there should be no better experts than the staff of Microsoft. However, giving the static IP address sounds like a good idea. I will have to try to work out how to do that.
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