Network printing issues all of a sudden

[BobMCT]

In my home network I have 11 devices which includes two wireless Brother printers. My router is an ASUS RT-N66U which for the past 1.5 years all has worked very, very well. For the past couple of weeks none of the windows 7 pc's can seem to print to either of these printers. The print jobs seem to sit in the Windows queue without doing anything and if I do a restart on them they are flagged as in error. I've even tried M$s stalled printer repair utility and while that clears the queue if I reprint the same thing happens. What only seems to work is to power cycle the printer. Then and only then do they print. I've tried both static addresses and dhcp assignments with the same results. All the printer drivers and definitions are in order on all the pc's being used.

So I'm at a loss. About the only thing that I've done recently is upgrade the firmware in the router. I use the Merlin version for this router and again its been performing well for over a year. The latest version is .39 (not that that matters).

I thought I would ask in this group to see if any of you guru's have any ideas as to what else I could check.

Thanks

 

[MikeHalloran]

I've noticed a lot of modern electronic products getting wonky after a year or two. I blame RoHS.

If a non-solder joint has indeed corroded or otherwise gone bad, there's not a damn thing you can do but chuck the router and buy a newer one.
Let's hope it's something else.

-----------------

Separately, I've encountered a couple or routers that screwed up their internal DHCP name-to-IPaddr tables, ~24 hours after they were booted, always by +1 in the last digit. I.e., a printer booted up, used DHCP, and got, say 192.168.1.67, and was accessible by its name for most of a day, after which the router sent traffic for that printer to 192.168.1.68 instead of 192.168.1.67. The symptoms were not vastly different from the behavior you report. I dealt with it by assigning fixed IP addresses to my printers, and telling the computers to address the printers by IP address, not name.

Try watching the network with something like Wireshark, and see if the printer traffic always goes where it should go.

 

[goombawaho]

So, basics. Go to a CMD prompt and do a pint -t IpAddressOfPrinter and let it sit there for a while. Do a CNTRL C and then see what percentage (if any) of pings are lost. This is to test basic connectivity.

Have you updated the firwmare on your printers?
Is that router firmware non-factory? I never recommend running stuff like DD-WRT on important systems. It is free/experimental/buggy. True, some work fine, but it's still a crap shoot.
Can you put another router in place just to see if it makes a difference?
Could you make the printers WIRED as a test?
Use NetStumbler to see if you have a lot of wireless interference from neighboring wi-fi

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

I would type ping -t <ip of printer> rather than "pint"

Just sayin....

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[rclarke250]

Try this to see if it works. Go to Devices and Printer, Right click on the printer, choose properties, click the advanced tab, clear the check box for "enable advanced printing features". Apply and test. I had to do this to get my computer to start printing to my network printer that worked fine previously.

 

[BobMCT]

Well, just to update everyone who suggested things (thanks!)... I ended up installing an alternate router. Not as robust as the other one but at least it works. Now the printers work as expected and we are experiencing no drop outs. Gosh dang failing electronics... Next time I'll buy cheap and plan to replace rather than high-end with longevity in mind.

Thx again.

 

[edfair]

Under similar circumstances I seem to recall using net use as the solution.

As a FWIW comment I've run across a couple of cases where 7 fails to talk to their DHCP server to get IP address. As a defensive measure I use fixed addresses with 7 machines. Better a little time at the front end rather than a service call later.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.