"Network printer no longer work....." Topic

This is kinda part two…..

OK, my wife's computer had issues, I took it to the Local Tech Guy (the problems were beyond my understanding). He backed up her data and reinstalled Vista. We get it back and now our network printer doesn't work. I have our two computers hooked into a router, our printer is hooked into my computer. The print sharing is turned on on both machines. It's worked for years, but now, nope. Her computer can see the printer. It can see the printer settings. Drivers are installed on both machines. But it will not print to it. No error codes, nothing.

Tech guy came over and we tried "everything" to get it to work, up to and including turning off both our computers firewalls. Still nothing. When I brought her computer home from his shop, I didn't change any printer settings, it should have been a simple "plug it into the network", but nope.

Anyone have any guesses. Only thing we can think of is to hook a network cable to the printer and hook it directly into the router. I'm not sure what Network cable costs, but if our setup worked once, it should work again……

Help, and thanks

Dave

Re-install the drivers?

Re-add the printer to each computer?

Did

Did

Nope

Nope

Turn everything off. Power up your pc, her pc, and finally the printer.

Threaten to go 'Office Space' on it?

What do you mean PC Load Letter?

Honestly, the printer share is contingent on the network/work group. Have you tried to share a folder?

I've done everything everyone here has kindly suggested. Still nothing.

And yes, we can share files……

Is there a big log of documents trying to print?

I've had power issues, where having the printer off at teh worng times filled up the printer cahce.

Also, although you have "tried everything" I assume you have tested that you can print to the printer fromt the computer it is actually attached to?

Is the printer still coming up with the same port designation.

Had a with a worm on XP once. After I got rid of it (didn't have a reinstall option on the XP as disk was misplaced).

At any rate on my hardware listing everything got itself bumped up as XP decided it was new/additional hardware – COM ports, lpt, etc. (COM 2 to COM 4). Since the printers were USB this changed the port that the computer needed to send the job to.

Is this an actual network printer? or is it a shared printer? If it is a shared printer you have to be in the same workgroup, and be able to see the computer that the printer is connected to.
If it is a network printer then it you need to get the IP address and then map the printer using that.

It was a shared printer that worked fine before the Vista reinstallation. We've hooked it directly to the network and now it works fine.

I just hate when things that used to work suddenly stop working, and you never know why.

Thanks everyone for your input.

…before the Vista reinstallation..

Well there's your problem right there :-D

Dave, I don't have any suggestions for you, sorry, but it sounds to me like the tech guy is not really a tech guy.
--
Tim

Dave, can you get it to work as a direct connection? Is the problem just network?

If you do 'add printer' can it actually find the printer? Mine picks it up by the IP address. Are you sure you have the right driver? They are often quite similar, with specific versions for different models and different drivers for direct and network operation.

Is the printer attached to an XP machine? Vista can't see XP unless XP has the networking update. That doesn't really sound like your issue, but can the two computers see each other and share documents?