In the age of autonomous vehicles and the portable devices that accompany us wherever we go, home printers still seem stuck in the past.
Not only do we talk about its essential mechanics, but something as simple and standardized as the WiFi connection can give us many headaches.
If your WiFi printer does not work in Windows 10, then we are going to give you the possible solutions so that you can fix it yourself.
Obviously, you should always check first of all that you have the latest version of the printer drivers installed in the system, which you can find on the manufacturer’s website.
These drivers are sometimes not necessary because Windows already recognizes the printer, but they almost always come with utilities to discover a WiFi printer on the home network, assign it the correct port, etc.
Use the Windows 10 utility to install the printer
Windows 10 has a printing troubleshooter built into the operating system, which will automatically detect connection problems with the printer and which, unlike the normal Windows troubleshooter, works quite well in this case.
To access it, go to Settings -> Devices -> Printers and scanners. There select your printer and click on «Manage».
In the window that opens, you will find the option to “Run the troubleshooter“, which will automatically try to detect what problem the printer has.
If Windows doesn't detect your WiFi printer
If your problem is that Windows does not even detect the printer, even using the manufacturer’s own discover tool, you may have to physically enable the printer to discover mode.
To do this, they generally have a button that we will have to press for a few seconds until a light starts to flash, usually blue.
Printer Control Panel
Once the light starts to flash, the printer will already be in discover mode, so we can go, in Windows, to Settings -> Devices -> Printers and scanners and click on the button «Add a printer or scanner». If all went well, the printer should appear and a wizard will automatically add it to the system.
In any case, make sure that the Wi-Fi network in common with the PC is configured in the printer before anything else, because if it is not, they will not be able to communicate.
Be careful with WiFi repeaters
A section within this same problem is sometimes caused by WiFi repeaters. Many times we put repeaters so that the WiFi signal reaches the whole home, but sometimes they can cause problems with WiFi printers.
If for some reason the printer is connecting to the router’s WiFi instead of the repeater’s, and the repeater is further away, the signal will be worse and often cause problems.
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WiFi radio
To solve this problem, simply make sure that the printer is connected to the correct WiFi, the one that gives it the best coverage. Also make sure you don’t have the printer boxed in, as this negatively affects the printer’s WiFi radio signal.
If it detects the printer but does not print
It may be the case that communication with the printer via WiFi is correct, but you cannot print. Many times restarting the PC will solve this, but if you do not want to restart the most effective solution is to restart the print queue, because it tends to get stuck relatively frequently.
To do this, click on the Start menu and type “Services” to access this section. In it, find “Print Queue”, right-click on it and then “Restart.”
If the printer does not work only on your PC
If you have several devices on your home network and the printer works fine on some, but not on your computer, then logic tells us that the problem is with the PC, and most likely the problem is that you do not have network discovery enabled in the team.
To check, go to the Windows 10 Control Panel and from there go to the “Network and Sharing Center” and click on “Change advanced sharing settings”.
Here, make sure you have the “Enable network discovery” option and the automatic configuration tick enabled.
Is the IP address assigned correctly?
Finally, you should check if the printer’s IP is correctly assigned. Briefly explained, if an IP address has four groups of digits, the IP of the printer and the IP of your PC must match in the first three.
For example, if your PC has IP 192.168.0.120, the printer must have IP 192.168.0.X (where X is any number between 1 and 254). If this is not the case, you must change the IP address of the printer because, otherwise, you will not be able to use it from your PC.
