Network printer shows offline on Windows 8

Anonymous

Original Title: I have hp laserjet 1020 plus printer installed on win 7 it was a share printer when i was giving any print from win8 pc printer is going to offline & when i remove & add printer its working

i was installed win8 latest drivers on all pc

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Anonymous

Hi Hrishikesh,

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

I would like you to add few information:

Did you make any hardware or software changes on the computer prior to this issue?

I would suggest you to make sure that all the cables for the printer are connected properly and the printer is turned ON. Sometimes, offline status for a printer could be due no power to the printer.You also need to make sure that network sharing might be turned off.

For more information, refer to the link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/turn-sharing-on-or-off

If all the basic settings are checked and are up to the mark, you can follow the methods to troubleshoot the issue:

Method 1:

You can refer to the link to fix printer issues by running the printer troubleshooter:

“Fix printer problems”

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/printer-problems-in-windows-help#fix-printer-problems=windows-8&v1h=win8tab1&v2h=win7tab1&v3h=winvistatab1&v4h=winxptab1

Method 2:

I would suggest you to uninstall and reinstall the driver for the printer.

You can follow the steps to do so:

Note: Please make sure that you have the setup file for the driver of the printer before uninstalling the current version.

a) Press Windows and x key together and click on Device Manager.

b) Locate the printer driver and expand the driver icon.

c) Right click on the driver icon and click on Uninstall.

d) Follow the onscreen instructions to uninstall the driver.

e) Locate the setup file of the driver for the printer.

f) Double Click on the setup file and follow the onscreen instructions to reinstall the driver.

Check if you are able to find the printer online.

For further reference, you can refer to the links:

“How to solve printing problems in Windows”

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/how-to-solve-printing-problems

“Install a printer”

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/install-a-printer

Do let us know about the status of this issue.

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92 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-03-10T17:05:47+00:00
With a large number of staff and students with Windows 8 and 8.1 machines, this is still driving me nuts.

The most reliable method I've found so far is to:
1. Right-click the windows button, or Windows-key+X and chose the Command Prompt (Admin) option.
2. In the DOS window that appears, type "net stop spooler" (without the quotes) and press the enter or return key.
3. When you see the message that the print spooler has stopped successfully, type "net start spooler" and press the enter or return key.
4. When you see the message that the print spooler has started successfully, open the Devices and Printers folder and refresh the window a few times. The printers should come back online after a moment or two.
From what I can tell this appears to affect machines that are sometimes connected to other networks, or disconnected from ours. Windows must poll the printers on occasions and on not finding them available, marks them offline.

So what we need is an option DONOTPOLLPRINTERS in the registry!!!

Hope this helps!
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Anonymous

2014-03-10T19:15:18+00:00

If I wasn't past my childbearing years I would name my firstborn after you. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been tearing my freaking hair out all day over this and your Stop Spool solution WORKED. I'm filing it away for next time (Since my last post on this subject was May 2013, I'm sure there will be a next time). OMG, thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!!

Marilyn
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Anonymous

2014-03-11T00:52:43+00:00

I have ONE user in our community of 6 Windows 8 Laptops / Tablets, and this one user is having similar "offline" printer issues. If you restart the Print Spooler service the printers will become online. I've attempted to set the Print Spool service to automatically restart after 10 minutes of an error, which it turns out not to restart and stays offline. I'm not sure what is causing this issue as I am in the same boat with you all now.

This is probably the easiest way. Thanks.

So for those of you who may be unfamiliar with how to do this (as I had to poke around too thinking I could do it from the system tray)

Go to Task Manager (I used CTRL+ALT+DEL to get the task manager to come up)

go to the Services tab

Find "Spooler"

Right click and choose "Stop"

Right click Spooler again and choose "Start"

Nice, thanks! Restarting the printer service worked fine for me; this is easy and will save me from cursing and rebooting on a regular basis.
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Anonymous

2014-03-11T22:00:19+00:00

To make my situation worse, now I am experiencing this issue, as I've purchased a new laptop with an OEM copy of Windows 8.1 Pro x64! I almost feel like it is something with our print server / drivers not being compatible somehow with windows 8.1... Any thoughts? I will check out Canon's website today to see what they have to offer for updated drivers.

I am in an environment with the following printers:

Canon iR Adv-8205

Canon iR Adv-8295

Canon iR Adv-C7260

Canon iR Adv-C5235

Canon iR Adv-4045

Canon iR Adv-400if

Also, does anyone have a script that can be ran to restart a service after a period of time? If anything, a script to restart the spooler service every 5 or 10 minutes would work for us having the issue.
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