An unreliable printer is one of the most common and disruptive technical issues that home and small business users have. It is a reoccurring issue that we see over and over again while working with hundreds of clients in the Knoxville Tennessee Area. Especially when a user is trying to print or scan within a special Line Of Business (LOB) software such as Eaglesoft (for Dentists) or eMDs (for Doctors).
Good news for you though. The four steps below will fix 90% of your printer problems. Give them a try!
1. When possible, use a physical ethernet network cable to connect your printer to your local network.
2. Make sure that you have the specific driver for that printer installed (if possible).
- To check this, navigate to Control Panel > Devices and Printers > Right click specific printer > Printer Properties > Advanced Tab
- Under the Advanced Tab, note if the driver closely matches the model of your specific printer. If the model name does not appear here (or it says “Universal Print Driver”), search the manufacturer’s website for the driver of your exact printer model and install it. You can come back to this screen and select the “Driver” drop down to change the driver.
- Make sure that you save your settings by pressing “OK.”
3. If your printer is on your network (and not connected via USB) make sure that your connection to the printer is by it’s IP address and not WSD connection (Web Services on Devices).
- Navigate to Control Panel > Devices and Printers > Right click specific printer > Printer properties > Port tab.
- On the Port tab, if you see that it is connected via WSD, rather than by IP, change this by selecting “Add Port.”
- Select “Standard TCP/IP Port” and click “New Port.”
- Click “Next” on the first screen and then type in the IP address of your printer (you can usually find this under the on screen network settings of your printer). And then press “Next” through the remaining prompts.
- Your computer is now set to connect to your printer via it’s IP address. You can verify this by going back to the Ports tab under Printer Properties.
4. Assign your printer a fixed IP address.
- This setting varies based on your model router. And you may have to get the assistance of your IT Administrator to set this up if you are in a small business environment.
- If you do have the ability to change this yourself, Google Search the phrase “How to assign fixed IP for (model of your router).”
- For purposes of showing you what this might look like, see the image below from a Unifi brand router.
And there you have it! 4 Steps To Make Your Printer More Reliable.
If you need assistance with your printer, or these 4 steps don’t work for you, please reach out to us at Support@VictoryTechnology.com or give us a call at 865-888-9942.
We can provide on-site assistance if your small business is located in the Knoxville Tennessee Area. If you are not located locally, we would be happy to provide remote assistance.
Thank you!
– Victory Technology Team