Cannot print to shared printer
 

I have a printer connected to my main PC via USB. This printer is shared over my wireless network.

I have had problems sometimes printing from my laptop to this printer, an error occurring saying the printer cannot be found. But at other times it does print.

I think I have narrowed this down to not having the printer turned on when initially trying to print to the printer. Of course, in that situation you would expect the printer to "not be found".

However, after the printer is then turned on, the "printer cannot be found" message still appears. The only way for the laptop to "find" the printer is to reboot the laptop, ensure the printer is turned on and then print.

It would seem logical that when trying to print a second time after the printer has been turned on after initially forgetting to turn it on, that XP should look again to find the printer, but it doesn't. It seems to take the attitude that as the printer couldn't be found the first time, it won't be there at all.

Is there anyway, in this situation if forgetting to first turn on the printer that I can force XP to re-find the printer or is a reboot of the laptop the only fix?

Or maybe I have something else which isn't configured correctly.

As always, any help with this would be much appreciated.

Re: Cannot print to shared printer
 

You could try a repair on the wireless connection on the laptop, maybe this will trick it into thiking it's got to look again?

Re: Cannot print to shared printer
 

Or alternatively if that doesn't work, try the following:

On the machine with the printer connected:
net stop server
net start server

If that doesn't sort it out, instead try on the other machine:
net stop workstation
net start workstation

You need to type these lines in from a command prompt. Doesn't sound like its a problem with the actual TCP/IP connection you see but rather with LanMan/Samba/CIFS file and printer sharing that windows uses - in which case this will reset that facility instead.

HTH

Re: Cannot print to shared printer
 

Druchii / opelfruitcase

Many thanks for your help on this. I decided to try the net stop workstation option as I thought doing it on the wireless laptop where I was printing away from the main PC would be easier than resetting the connection on the "server".

Anyway, it worked a treat and I have now written a little batch file as below which I have saved in the All Users section of the Start Menu to run if this crops up.

Thanks goodness for command lines!

-------------------------------------------------------------
@echo off
echo Resetting the laptop's network connection, please wait...
net stop workstation
net start workstation
echo The Network connection has been reset.
pause
-------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks again for your excellent help. :tu:

Re: Cannot print to shared printer
 

Glad to be of assistance :)