Printer problems at the worst possible time-- help!

Factual Questions
1

Hey all,
So… we can’t get our customers in the gardening business to move to email billing no matter WHAT we do, so we have to stick with good old-fashioned print. The problem is that the printer suddenly decided to die… disappear… I don’t even know. :frowning:

Here’s what happened: my laptop said over and over that the printer (Canon Pixma MP250, a few years old) was “offline.” When going to the control panel, it’s impossible to find this printer. It just isn’t there, and no printer search could find it. I tried this on a laptop running Windows Vista and then moved the printer to the desktop (Windows 7.) Exactly the same thing happened. Switching printer cables didn’t make any difference. The billing HAS to be done in the next 2 days…

Is there anything that can be done about this? All of the advice I’ve seen begins with “find the printer.” But neither computer will see that printer… as far as either one of them is concerned, it just plain doesn’t exist. And another thing-- when the printer was turned on, it automatically printed two old printing jobs, one from several months ago. Then that’s all it would do.

This has NEVER happened before!! HELP!!
(gets paper bag to breathe into)

Everyone here is so smart! I’m SURE somebody knows the answer… :wink:

2

I’m assuming you are connecting via USB and not parallel port.

Did you try to connect to a different USB port on your notebook? I know you tried a new cable, but did you plug it into a different port on the laptop itself? It’s possible you have a dead USB port on your laptop.

Has the printer ever been connected to the Win7 (Desktop) machine before? A lot of printers require you to install their software BEFORE connecting the equipment.

If it hasn’t, I would download the software, install and follow the instructions, only connecting the printer when told to.

Go here and choose the appropriate download.

3

Turn off your printer. Right click on the" my computer" icon. Click on manage then services then find the print spooler. Stop and restart the service. Shut down your computer. Turn the printer back on. Start your computer back up. See if that worked.

4

In a pinch (like with a 2 day deadline and no printer) you could print/save to PDF on a thumb drive and take that to Staples and have them print it.

That would be my plan B for taking care of the emergency, to allow me to resolve the printer issue at a more leisurely pace.

5

It works on the desktop, but not the laptop. But Quickbooks is still installed only on the laptop. There is just no way to make this work, and I’m ordering another printer ($50.) Maybe it’s what I get for being so dumb, but I absolutely do not know how to print from QB through a computer it is not installed on. Thanks to everyone for the help, though!

6

Oh, so it DOES work on the desktop? It very well could be an issue with your USB port on your laptop. If that’s the case, a new printer probably will not work either. Do you have another USB port to try? I would definitely do that before ordering a new printer.

7

Also, printer sharing is not very difficult to do. I don’t have a Vista machine to walk through, but I can give you the basics on how to do it in just a few minutes as long as both machines are on the same network.