Win10 laptop won't connect to ONE printer--

[Kev Williams]

I absolutely hate windows 10, but business life is forcing me to use it, tax software among other things...

Anyway, my problem: I got a new office printer recently, connected to my win7-office computer, and I NEED my win10 laptop to connect to the printer-- it won't.

What's what:
I have three printers on my network:
A Canon color inkjet, pure wifi
A Samsung b/w laser, USB to an XP computer>router
A Canon b/w laser < the new office printer, USB to the office win7>router ...

aside from the 10, I have eight computers on my network: 1-win98, 3-winXP's, 1-Vista, 4-win7's.
three of the win7's need access to my three printers; the garage7, basement7 and office7...

The win10 laptop won't connect to any of my XP's whatsover, none of them show up on the network computers list. So that eliminates the Samsung printing from the win10-

The win10 WILL connect to the Canon color printer, but refuses to connect to the Canon OFFICE computer.

The seven non-win10 computers can ALL connect to each other via remote desktop,

The three win7's will ALL connect to all three printers, no problem. All win7's and the 10 will also connect both ways thru remote-desktop...

ALL of my computers have all passwording disabled thru group policy and the registry, all sharing turned up full-blast, all permissions are set for full-control over everything by everyone...

Best I can tell all firewalls are set pretty much identical too...

Everything works as it should EXCEPT for the Win10 laptop refusing to connect to my new printer (or the XP's, but that's not a pressing issue for now)...

FWIW, the new printer works fine USB'd to the laptop, but I need it portable so that's a no-go...

ANY idea what I'm missing? pullinghair.gif banghead.gif nilly.gif

[Paul F Franklin]

Does the new printer have wifi? If so, will the laptop connect to the printer via wifi?

[Rich Engelhardt]

FWIW, the new printer works fine USB'd to the laptop,

Tremendous help knowing that. It eliminates a whole lot of things - like printer drivers for instance and incompatibilities between the printer and the Windows 10.
It also narrows the issue down to a network issue.

first go to settings - the little window thing in the lower left - click on it -then clikc on what looks like a sprocket.
When settings comes up - click on Network and Internet
Go down to Advanced Netwrok Settings and click on Network and Sharing Center
On the left side click on Change Advanced Settings
Click on "All Networks" - make sure you check "Enable file sharing for devices that use 40 or 50 bit encryption. By Default Win 10 uses 128 bit & that can cause problems with older stuff.
Next go back up to Guest or Public (current profile) and click that. Go to Turn on network discovery and make sure that's checked.
Next go up to Private and makes sure Turn on network discovery is checked there.
If you changed anything - then g to the bottom and hit "Save changes".

Now try to discover the printer and the Win XP machines.
This is just the basic stuff - don't get worried of this doesn't work. There's a lot of stuff that deals with the IP addressing and the wireless router we can check.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Ok - I reread the original post & it sounds like you know a fair amount about this.

Does your router use 2GHz or 5GHz - or both. I'm on Spectrum and my router has both. Sometimes when the power goes out, my laptop connects with the 5 GHz and I drop my printer - which is on the 2Ghz. I also lose the ability to see other computers and printers.
That's another thing to check.

I assume you are using DHCP off the router to get an IP address.
Are all the hosts on the network using DHCP or did you assign static addresses to them? You wouldn't be the first peron in history, no matter how skilled or how long doing it, t have messed up an IP address. Check the address and the subnet mask just to be sure.

Can you ping the printer? Can you ping the XP machines?

[Mike Soaper]

fwiw I had a epson printer that would initially connect to but quickly disconnect from a mesh network, prior to the mesh there were no wireless connection issues

If you can, you might test a wired network connection to the troubled devices

[Mike Soaper]

you might also want to take a look at this

Windows XP Network Troubleshooting - Enable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP (NetBT) - Practically Networked

[Kev Williams]

Thanks guys--

Paul, this particular printer doesn't have wifi- I got one without on purpose as the office computer is hard wired to the router so I don't really need it, (I guess ), plus I like the blazing speed vs pokey wireless...

Rich-
Wireless: I'm using 2.4ghz pretty much exclusively. My BIL's computer (which he brings from home every day) is the only 5ghz...
Also, all my sharing/discovery settings, 40bit encryption, etc etc match what you listed above. I DID turn on media streaming, didn't help--

other anomalies: My Garage-7 computer won't show up on the win10 network list. I don't think the win7 laptop does either...

I just sat at the Vista laptop, it connected up to the new printer just fine--

the Garage7 hasn't been connected to the new printer (thought it was!), but it connected up just fine too just a few minutes ago...

It dawned on me that I have an ethernet hub on the office desk, so I disabled the wifi in the win10 and hardwired it to the router thru the hub-- works great but the printer still won't connect...

Another issue I've been having lately (while I'm at it) is that both garage computers and the Vista laptop, the router keeps dropping them. Signal strength on all is good to very good. Sometimes they'll just reconnect if I tell them to, but sometimes I have to turn off the wireless adapter and back on to get 'em to go...

Not sure if it matters, but we have, let me think: pretty sure it's 17 "Wiz" LED wifi full-color light bulbs on the same router. I've been thinking about getting a second router JUST for the light bulbs, would that help with the wifi dropping at least?

pretty frustrating... many thanks for the help!

[Rich Engelhardt]

Kev, I'm at the end of my ability to do much more. I've been out of the computer/IT business for 10 years & a number of years before that when it comes to the workstation side of things - as opposed to the server side.

Hopefully someone with a better handle on things will chime in.

[Steve Wurster]

I'm going to start by saying you probably shouldn't be running anything pre-Windows 10 anymore, unless those machines with older OSes are needed to communicate with some specific hardware. And if that's the case, hopefully you don't have any of those older OSes connected to the Internet.

All that being said, my guess at the moment is that this might have something to do with SMB. If your Windows 10 machines cannot connect to any/some of the older OS-based machines then SMB might be a factor. The older SMB protocols are effectively (if not actually) deprecated due to security issues, so it's possible Windows 10 is just refusing to connect to them out of the box. You might have to do some finagling of SMB options.

That's just a guess anyway.

[Jim Becker]

I've always found using "sharing" to be "interesting" for connections to printers and stopped doing that many years ago...and that's regardless of OS. In your case, being a Windows user with many generations of the OS, you may be having security clashes happening with the sharing function.

[Kev Williams]

I'm going to start by saying you probably shouldn't be running anything pre-Windows 10 anymore, unless those machines with older OSes are needed to communicate with some specific hardware.

This is precisely why I'm trying to get my only win10 to cooperate! I have 18 computer controlled laser and CNC engravers in my house, 13 of which MUST have no newer than Win7 computers due to connection and software issues. At this time only my Win7's are on the internet, everything else is blocked by the router. I'm also looking into (when I can find time) to figure out what port numbers will enable local traffic but not internet traffic, and info on how to set it all up.

So I'm looking at win10- or 11- for internet use. All other computers will become strictly proprietary to running machines and various graphics programs. And whether win 10 or 11, they WILL have to play nice with the older computers. Not connecting to a printer every other computer I own WILL connect to doesn't bode well...

Steve, as to the Server Message Block protocol (had to look that up!) I'm not sure where in the computer to deal with that, unless I already am and don't realize it!

[Derek Meyer]

You can check your SMB settings in Windows Firewall (Advanced settings > inbound connections). There are several entries for each one, and they correspond to your network type - Public or Private. Most of the settings are enabled by default on Private networks but disabled on Public networks, so if you have your network type set to Public then these will be blocked.

Also check the UPnP settings in Windows Firewall, as blocking them can prevent Windows 10 from connecting to certain devices.

If you can, I would connect the printer directly to the network, assign it an IP address and then set up a network printer on the Windows 10 computer that points directly to this IP. This is more reliable than depending on a connection through another computer to the printer.

[Steve Demuth]

What do you mean by "refuses to connect?" Can the Win 10 machine ping the ip address of the CANON printer?

Also, what does the port setup for the printer look like on the Windows 10 computer?

[Jim Becker]

What do you mean by "refuses to connect?" Can the Win 10 machine ping the ip address of the CANON printer?

Also, what does the port setup for the printer look like on the Windows 10 computer?

I believe his printers are physically connected to other computers and not on the network directly. Those printers are connected to older computers/Windows versions.

[Kev Williams]

I believe his printers are physically connected to other computers and not on the network directly. Those printers are connected to older computers/Windows versions.

My only wifi printer, a Canon 5200 color inkjet, is the ONE printer my win10 WILL connect to, and it's like 8 years old, if that matters..

This is a graphic of the nightmare I call 'my home network'...minus the win10 laptop--
network.jpg
honestly, I'm surprised it works as well as it does. But, every computer with the exception of the Win98, all work via Remote Desktop, all the machines connect and work.

But add a Win10 into the mix and it all falls apart