Network printer shows offline on Windows 8

Having contributed my expression of frustration a few months and pages back, and I am still frustrated.

The Brother MFC-885CW printer has for some time now not showing Offline - rather it shows Error.  (A new Brother printer, bought a couple of months ago, works just as it should, but surely the solution is not to chuck out all perfectly functional older printers or roll back to WinXP)

I have tried the printer reinstallation by portname and the addition of SNMPLegacy in the registry, but these did not fix the issue.  The only way to print is to connect through the USB port.

Just as the previous contributor said, it is ridiculous that these printer problems still remain unfixed after so many years.

Wow Microsoft!

I have this problem on both a Windows 7 and Windows 8 computer. Looking through the forums, this problem has been going on since at least 2009 and appears to have started with Vista.

It has been blamed on many things and there have been many fixes, workarounds, etc. Yet the problem is still with us 5 years later. I'm wondering if this makes Windows O/S not fit for purpose under Australian law...

I have tried many fixes, re-installing seems to work all the time, but is pretty drastic. I've just tried turning off SNMP and will see how that goes.

In my case I have a Xerox 2120 network printer connected to an ADSL wireless router. The printer is usually turned off as we only print occasionally. I have two laptops, one with Windows 7, one with Windows 8.

Both laptops run for several days between re-boots and one can work while the other does not, indicating the issue is on the laptops.

Turning SNMP seems to have solved the issue for the moment. But what is interesting on Windows 8 is that in Control Panel I find three copies of the printer but only one shows in the printer dialog when I try to print something. There are two copies on Windows 7.

I remove the duplicate copies and Control Panel shows they are gone. Close and re-open on Windows 7 and the duplicate printer shows up again. On Windows 8, it doesn't show up again. I delete the one copy of the printer and re-install it. It shows the printer as Copy 2.

It appears that there is an issue here with removing devices leaving some junk in the system. Could this be the root cause?

Then most likely the IP address has changed on the printer since the creation of the WSD or TCP/IP printer port.

Print the network configuration page from the device.  I do not know if this device supports WSD.  If it's less than 3 years old it should.  If it more than 3 years it might but not all the WSD functionality would be supported.

There should be some HOSTNAME information on the page.  I would create a new Standard TCP/IP Port using the hostname rather than the IP address.  If the device obtains a new IP, the routing table for you access point and other network infrastructure should route to the name rather than a fixed IP.

Open Printer Properties, Ports, Add Port , Standard TCP/IP Port, enter the HOSTNAME from the config page.  I expect the network card to respond to the queries and the port to be properly configured.  Click Ok and print a test page.

If that does not work open a command window and verify you can reach the device using the ping command

ping HOSTNAME

the response should match the IP you see on the network config page you printed earlier.

The "Turn on network discovery" button is already enabled on my home private network.