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I recently purchsed a brother mfc - 490cw wireless printer. I installed it in accordance with the instructions in the user guide and everything worked fine until a couple of days ago when we had a brief power outage. The printer is recognizing the belkin 54g router connection and so are each of the three lap tops that we are using. Our problem is not one of connectivity as we are able to access the internet wirelessly from all the laptops from anywhere in the house. My wife has two laptops, one running XP and the other Vista. She is able to send her print jobs and they are processed immediately. I have a Toshiba Satellite P200 running Vista. The problem we are having seems confined to my laptop. When I send a print job nothing happens unless and until I restart my computer. The print job is visible in the queue but there is nothing I can do at the control panel to the print job short of shutting and rebooting. Can you help me please?
Good Evening,
Ensure that the printer under your system is not set to offline. If it is you can enable the printer.
Otherwise, please try deleting the printer from your printer folder and then reinstall the printer.
Give those a try... If you need further explanation of how to complete these steps please reply and I will be able to provide a step by step for you.
Thanks.
Computer Support Specialist
MCP, A+ & N+ Certified, 15+ Years of Experience
I have already uninstalled the printer from the printers folder twice. My printer icon indicates that it is being used offline so too do both my wife's laptops - but print nonetheless. I have changed the setting in the options menu to work on line but it has no effect on what the printer icon says and obviously on what the printer does. I have just noticed that if I have multiple print jobs in the queue restarting the computer is necessary for each print job.
Please verify there is a print job waiting to print.
Once you have confirmed this, please follow the steps below:
Click Start (globe)
Type services.msc
search for Print Spooler
Verify if it states if its started or not.
If it is not started, press Start the service on the left hand side of the screen.
if it says that it is started, please restart the process.
Please let me know if this makes the printer print.
I checked the status it indicates started. I restarted from the left hand side of the screen and sent another job to the printer. That one didn't work.
Do you have a firewall on this computer. if so can you try turning of the firewall temporarily to test printing please.
No I don't have a firewall. Just AVG anti virus software, but as I first stated I had no problems until the brief power outage. I have just finished uninstalling the brother printer and I'm about to reinstall. I suspect that nothing will change.
Just reinstalled the printer and as suspecte the issue of my inability to print without restarting remains unresolved.
Before you restarted the print spooler, was there a print job waiting to be printed, and if so did it print?
There wasn't when you first suggested it. I sent a job to the printer and waited an appropriate interval for the print job to get to the printer and start printing - generally only takes about twenty seconds. Nothing happend. I went to the control panel to confirm that the brother printer had in fact received the info. It showed a green check mark (ready) beside the printer icon, one job in the queue and stated that the printer was offline. I then went, as instructed, to the services menu, located the printer spool and noted that it indicated automatic start and also that it showed started. It didn't start until I hit the restart on the left hand side of the page (as instructed).
Have you completed the Vista SP1 update, through Windows Update?
Any post I have read for such an issue, points to a know issue with Vista intermittent offline printer issues through wireless.
Also, you may try unplugging the router, wait 10 seconds plug it in, once the router is back up, restart your laptop and verify connection. This should ensure you have a solid connect. Also verify the strength of the wireless signal between the printer/router/laptop.
Sorry for the delay in response. I got caught up in a couple of lengthy telephone conversations. I have already tried disconnecting from the router and my high speed internet and verified connectivity and signal strength. both at the printer and the laptop. The problem does not appear to be with these apects. I'm pretty certain that I've downloaded all the windows updates as they came along, although I can't specifically remember if SP1 was amongst them. I'm downloading it at this very moment and have three hours and fifty-five minutes remaining to complete the task. Something interesting just happened; my wife just informed me that her hp laptop running xp is still able to send print jobs to the printer and the printer is still recognizing the request immediately. However, her new hp pavillion tx2000 running vista is now doing exactly what mine is doing.
For interest sake, please turn off the AVG antivirus, and see if that resolves the issue. i have also read where AVG somehow has magically interfered with printing with vista. Also, make sure Windows Firewall is turn off. Once you have tested these, and if you are still unable to print. Turn both AVG and Windows firewall back on to protect your computer. Thanks.
All of that is going to have to wait until I complete the sp1 download, by which time the brother help desk will be open for its regular hours. I'm fairly certain that they are going to know exactly why I'm encountering this issue.
If the steps i provided above including install vista sp 1 do not correct your issue, I can request that your deposit be refunded. Good luck.
I'm a tired and exhausted lad right now and it is well past my bed time. I have to go to work in the morning but my wife will pick up where I've left off, starting with a direct conversation with tech support for Brother. thanks for the assistance thus far i'll let you know how things evolve. download is 82% complete with 59 minutes remaining. Can't stay up for it. Thank you
Good Evening - Were you able to resolve this issue?
My wife got on the phone with tech support at brother this morning. they were able to resolve the issue within very short order. I only had a brief conversation with my wife subsequent to resolution of the issue and she wasn't quite certain as to what steps she'd been guided through to sort the problem out. She did manage to divine that the fix somehow involved changing the IP address. I remain completely puzzled. I asked her what had suddenly cause the failure after some three or four weeks of successful and trouble free operation, but she hadn't thought to ask. As a matter of interest. I completed the SP1 download before going to work this morning, restarted the computer and sent a print job to the printer. I then noticed that the SP1 install had wiped clean the the brother install. I re-installed the printer and tried again. |Again without success.
The printer maybe set to use DHCP, to obtain its IP information. At the time you had the power outage, the printer would have received a new IP Address from your router. Which would explain the printing issues as the lpt port would have been bound to the old IP Address. I would suggest that you set your printer to a static IP address and disable DHCP if possible, which the directions should be included in the printer documentation. This should correct the issue from occurring again.