Printer Not Connected

[Jim Koepke]

Recently an Epson ET-2760 printer was purchased. The idea of loading an ink tank seemed better than always buying new are refilled cartridges.

When it works it is fine. Most of the time the dialog box comes back with "Printer not connected" and "looking for printer."

It seems the only way to get a print is to turn everything off, restart the computer and then things work fine. This seems to be a problem with many others with very few answers.

The Epson help site is not done very well and help for the problem wasn't found. It may have been my frustration after having to feed my printer model in on almost every page and then having it come back to the first page again that got me to give up.

Has anyone had any luck with this printer or have ideas on why a computer restart is needed?

printer dialog.png
System Info.png

I do tend to leave my computer on 24/7.

jtk

[Stan Calow]

I don't know, but it seems to me that if my printer has not been used for a few days, it will get kicked off my local network as well. My network allows a max of 20 devices connected so maybe it has something to do with that.

[Jim Becker]

I have had similar issues over time ... my solution was to just plug it in via a USB cable for now since it's physically close to my computer at this point, unlike at the other property.

[Jim Koepke]

I missed mentioning one detail, this printer used to be networked and did print via wi-fi with similar problems. So I purchased a USB cable and it is now on the cable. The printer still can't be found or shows as not connected without a restart of the computer.

jtk

[Doug Garson]

Funny, we have the same or similar Epson printer and it has worked flawlessly for almost two years but the HP printer we had before did something similar and we never figured it out. We would get the message "Printer Offline". Very frustrating and part of the reason we went to the Epson plus the tank system vs cartridges makes ink cheaper.

[Paul F Franklin]

Windows has a setting in device manager to allow the USB root hubs to be turned off when inactive for a while to save power. That can cause issues like this. I don't know if Macs have a similar setting but it might be worth a look.

[ChrisA Edwards]

Do you have more than one WiFi network? I have about three in my house.

Sometimes my laptop connects to a network that the printer is not on and therefore cannot see the printer.

The laptop knows there is a printer, but cannot find it because of this issue. As soon as I put my laptop back on the same Wifi network, everything works fine.

This is an Epson printer.

[Jim Koepke]

We only have one wi fi network.
The printer is currently connected via USB cable.

The weird thing is earlier I tried to print something and got the "not connected" dialog. So my reaction after a couple of minutes was to do a computer restart. During the boot cycle all of a sudden the printer started to print and finished the job before the computer completed the boot cycle.

There seems to be some kind of driver or firmware anomaly that is holding up the process.

jtk

[Larry Frank]

I have Brother laser printers and had the same issue when they were using Wi-Fi. Printers would go into deep sleep and never wake up. Like others, I put them on USB and very few problems. It was my wife's printer and she was UNHAPPY.

[Curt Harms]

Windows has had its recent printer 'issues' due to flawed updates. Patches to patch the patches, ah Microsoft. What helped me with networked printers was to assign static I.P. addresses to each printer. Now the print system knows where to look, no DHCP or whatever involved.

[Kev Williams]

I bought an Epson printer like last February. Since July it's been waiting for my next recyling trip to the dump. Just quit working. Turns on, does nothing else. It replaced a 10+ year old Canon that wouldn't recognize the ink cartridge holder. That's about 20x the service I got from the Epson. A Canon has replaced the Epson, and ironically, it's doing the same thing as Jim's Epson; every day I have to shut it off and turn it on to get rid of the 'PRINTER OFFLINE' error message.

Also ironically, I replaced an almost 20 year old HP b/w laser office printer about a year ago with a similar Canon. The HP still worked, but I couldn't figure out how why or how to fix the black streaks it was laying down. And the new Canon has been working flawlessly...

Hit or Miss I gues--

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I think I have responded to a similar thread before. I found connection problems after upgrading to an HP Color LaserJet via wifi. All the devices connected just fine, but after a few days, the Windows devices had problems while the Apple devices were fine. I assigned a static IP to the printer and connected it via ethernet and it was still causing problems with the Windows devices. I rebooted the router and devices, connected via USB cable and deleted the drivers and re-installed the drivers and every few days or weeks, the connection problem would return on the Windows devices.

I found references to adding Google DNS 8.8.8.8 and Secondary DNS 8.8.4.4 to the printer configuration. This solves a good majority of problems people are experiencing with their printers. All my connection problems have been resolved since configuring my printer with google DNS.