Just a small tip for using a Network Printer at home (i.e. you connect without a direct cable) – set the IP address manually. Most home or small business networks (and likely large networks) are set up in that each computer gets it’s address automatically – but it’s not guaranteed to be the same each time. This works fine for most things – but it can cause problems with a network printer.
What I’ve noticed is that windows will set up the network printer with the IP address at the time of the printer. Later on the printer and the computers get turned on and off – and then it gets a new address. However your laptop thinks the printer is still at that same address – and can’t connect (it shows the printer as offline). What’s interesting is that if you delete and then re-add the printer it works fine – which tells us the printer itself is fine.
So to work around this there are a few options:
- You can give the printer a hostname – and use that for the connection.
- Set the IP address of the printer manually – typically something like 192.168.1.99 will work fine.
After you do this then set up the printer to use that new hostname/address. Unfortunately there are too many different kinds of printers to tell you how to do this – but it can help you with not losing the network printer connection….
