Suddenly, my printer is refusing to print. It acts as if it is not connected to my computer. It is connected through wifi. It worked fine yesterday. Asfar as I know I didn’t do anything to disable. Any thought what might be causing it?
I have an older HP, and occasionally I have to turn it off and back on. Mine has an on/off switch in the back. That’s always worked for me!
I have a relatively new HP printer. It went weird once. I had to uninstall it on my computer and then reinstall it. Works fine now.
@VeryHappy How do you uninstall it? It is an old printer. I can’t remember what software I installed.
@chercheur I tried that. It didn’t help. I can try again. Turn it off overnight and hope that it will work in the morning.
Try connecting with a USB cable and see if you can print that way instead of using wifi.
Here is another suggestion, but wait and see if @VeryHappy or anyone else has a better solution, first.
On your computer, go to “Printers & Scanners” (use the Window’s search bar if needed).
You should see your printer listed there. Click on it, then hit “remove device.”
Back in Printers & Scanners, you should see “Add a printer or scanner.”
Select it, and it should find your printer (hopefully!).
OK, one more thing … have you tried restarting your computer? Not shutting it down, but restarting. A shut down doesn’t fully shut down your computer any more - you have to do a restart.
https://www.howtogeek.com/349114/shutting-down-doesnt-fully-shut-down-windows-10-but-restarting-it-does/
I can try to shut down the computer and see.
Restart it, @Iglooo. Don’t do a shut down.
“A shut down doesn’t fully shut down your computer”
The world is becoming incomprehensible to me.
Sometimes my printer doesn’t put an address in when sending a print job. Go in and see if a print job is “pending” and cancel it. Then resend the job.
So obvious things are checking your wifi and router and make sure it’s good.
One of the most common things that happens especially around like windows updates is that the printer is NOT pointed to the correct printer. To check : go to printers and make sure you have like green check mark on the correct printer. Then purge anything you have tried to print and clear it. Then go to print something but make sure before you hit print that it is being pointed to the correct printer. Sometimes it gets changed to like windows fax or pdf or something strange
As suggested restart your printer and computer…
Last resort is downloading the printer drivers but in reality shouldn’t have to be done
WiFi, router are working. It’s just the printer. I have done everything a coupe of times, turning it on and off resending, etc. I haven’t removed the printer from my system preference yet. I am afraid to do that in case I can’t get it back on. The printer is copying ok. The printer is old, 10-15ish years old and could be done except I would think it will go out with a little more warning.
clear your print jobs
I did. There is nothing in the print queue. It looks as if the printer isn’t getting the print commend.
Did you make sure when you go to print that it is pointed to the actual printer. My old HP got changed when doing an windows update and actually changed the print destination to like pdf instead of the printer.
Yes, it shows the right printer it is printing. I just looked up the ave life of a HP inkjet printer, 3 years. Mine is way over 10 years old. It lasted wonderfully long. I used to have an Ipson(?) printer. I had to get a new one every few years. It was a real pain. I still feel like it is a software problem than hardware tho.
We recently moved and have a very old printer (Epson) and since we moved, it’s been having lots of issues. My H can’t print from his Mac anymore, so he forwards stuff to me and I can print from my Windows laptop. When I print, it takes quite a while, and I eventually receive an error message, THEN it prints. However, if I need to scan something, I can’t print anymore and have to turn off and then turn back on the printer before I can print. I’ve done all the stuff suggested here (restarts, removing and re-installing the printer, etc.). At least I can print now - but haven’t figured out why H can’t or why it takes so long/receive the error message first.
I’ve though about replacing the printer, since I paid less than $50 around 8 years ago, but haven’t given up yet!
We also have an old HP printer. It seems to go on and off with printing. Did you try printing from a phone to see if it is just the computer that won’t print? Ours has a screen on the printer with different functions and if yours does go to setup and then network and then print wireless network test to see if all looks good. Sometimes just doing that seems to reset the printer for some reason or maybe it’s just coincidence…
Wifi eventually stopped working on my old printer. I had a network jack handy so hard-wiring the ethernet worked for while until eventually that quit too. So then I plugged directly into the printer with a USB cable which kept things going for another couple years but sadly it eventually died completely.
All of these things are chips inside the printer (wifi, ethernet, usb). They can fail independently of other stuff. So if all the software troubleshooting (rebooting, reinstalling, different cables, updated drivers, etc) don’t work, then it might just be that the printer’s wifi chip died (assuming the printer shows as offline in Windows).
Personally I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. Printers are practically cheaper than ink so they’re not too expensive to replace.
I connect to my old HP laser printer with a USB cable. If that works, and you don’t mind a wired connection, that may extend your printer’s life for a bit longer.