I work with wireless printers and this week I helped a client with an existing wireless printer and a Windows 10 laptop and Windows 7 desktop computer.
For the existing one, the owner said it used to work and it stopped connecting to his computers last month. The investigation started and using my smartphones, I scanned for wireless printers and found none. This was after I connected to the their wireless network. I looked at his laptop computer and the printer was missing from his Devices and Printers. I let it search for printers and nothing was found so I directed my attention to the wireless printer.
My gut told me the printer needed set up again on their wireless network. I accessed the printer’s administrator utility on it’s front panel and I was correct – it was not connected to any network. The the wireless setup wizard was started and It found the wireless network. Then it wanted to attach and have the router password entered. Once this was fulfilled, it connected to the network. On each computer I ran the printer discovery and the wireless was found and configured. A test page was sent which printed and everyone was happy.
Sometimes, entering the password is the problem because it is case-sensitive. Some wireless printer front-panel entry systems are challenging because the user must toggle through the alphabet sequentially tapping a button repetitively. If just one character is incorrect, the password is rejected and must be reentered. The better ones have a touchscreen where characters can be entered directly.