New wireless printer assist please?

[BobMCT]

In my home network my router/gateway IP is 192.168.1.1 and most of my devices are assigned the IP's of 101-115.
I purchased a new Brother wireless MFC printer and assigned it the IP of .106. After installing the drivers on my desktop Win 7 I've successfully created the printer device and it prints just fine.

Now its time to install the printer on the other PC's, mainly laptops. I've tried on at least three different ones so far and experience the same failure and error messages.

First, all the laptops are configured to connect to the wireless network and they do. They can access shares, other network printers as well as the Internet. When I run "add a new printer" the scan does not find anything other than the already installed ones. I therefore proceed where I define the IP of the new printer and the make/model of the printer. As I have the drivers available on a shared NAS I point the driver load to that folder and it proceeds normally to install the printer.

It states that the installation has completed successfully and all indicators seem to show that it's been completed just fine. I then try to print a test page and the page just sits in the queue waiting for a response from the printer. Eventually it times out stating it cannot connect to the printer.

I try to run a ping to the printer IP and the error received is "host unreachable". Normally that would indicate no route so I check my configuration settings and again the gateway is 192.168.1.1, the printer is 192.168.1.106 and the particular laptop I'm using is 192.168.1.109. The working desktop is 192.168.1.102 and the working other network printer is 192.168.1.105.

If I run "arp -a" I see all the other devices listed but NOT the new printer. But what I don't understand is that I can print to it perfectly from 192.168.1.102 which seems to be configured similarly to the laptop(s).

I've verified the configuration on the printer by using both the LCD display and printing a configuration page. It confirms that the IP is static at 192.168.1.106 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 which is normal in this single segment class C LAN.

Would someone reading this who may have some suggestions as to what I could look at/try next please respond because after devoting the better part of 1.5 days on this its gotten quite frustrating. And the Brother support site has nothing covering this as well as several other windows and/or network centric support sites.

Thanks all

 

[linney]

Did you run the Setup for the printer on all the computers that you want to access this wireless printer? On my HP wireless printer the setup asks "how do you want to connect to this printer" and it offers a choice of wirelessly or via USB. I just select wireless and the setup does it all for me. It does set a IP address of 192.168.0.3 itself, I don't set any manual ports. After setup I just make sure the printer is a Shared Printer and the Default printer.


Are there any Firewalls that might be interfering with printing

Have you tried the printing troubleshooter.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Troubleshooting\Hardware and Sound

 

[micker377]

The last time I had a wireless printer setup problem (yes, it is a Brother!), I ended up calling Brother and having them walk me through it! When I made a comment about one of his instructions not being according to the manual... he replied that the "instructions in the manual don't always apply"! Something about the instructions being written for XP, and not updated for Win 7! I ended up going into the Control Panel and manually assign all of the needed properties.

 

[BadBigBen]

Question: is the PC that works, attached per Ethernet cable or also over wireless?

it may be the AP (Router) that is blocking the laptops from connecting to the printer, in that it places both in separate networks (internally)...

you may need to go ahead and attach each laptop per Ethernet cable, install the printer, and then go over wireless...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[BobMCT]

Resolved! Thanks for the responses as each gave me a direction to look at. However, BigBadBen hit it on the head when he mentioned that the router/AP might be placing the devices in separate internal networks. Even though the subnet was the same I had to enable device bridging in the wireless config and that instantly resolved the problem.
Thanks again for the responses.

 

[BadBigBen]

Glad to hear that you resolved the issue... and thank you for posting back with what the solution was...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"