laptop unable to connect wirelessly to a pc connected printer

grandad69 · 19 Jan 2018

Hi, hope you can help.
Summary: my wife is trying to print from her Acer/windows 7 laptop wirelessly to a pc connected printer but not succeeding.
Overview: the windows7/pc is connected to an Epson SX218 printer by cable. The pc is connected to our Virgin router by a cable. My wife connects to the wireless network wirelessly but even though the sx218 printer is visible, printing does not work - communications error. She can print to another Epson printer that is connected wirelessly to the network.
I have tried updating the drivers on the SX218 printer, and run the Printer Troubleshooter which only told me to make it the default printer, but printing still did not work. I added the SX218 printer to the laptop successfully over the wireless network and it displays fine, although the Epson Status Monitor wont connect, giving the communication error. Printing from the pc works fine.
Any ideas? If you need more info please let me know.
Thanks.

samuria · 19 Jan 2018

On some Epson printers you need to use a utility from Epson to connect the problem is that the PC wants a response from the printer to print and it doesn't get that via wireless

mrjimphelps · 19 Jan 2018

It sounds like you have the printer's USB (i.e. local) connection and the wireless (i.e. network) connection both active at the same time. I believe that this is causing the problem. Remove the local connection (i.e. the USB cable), uninstall the driver off of any computer that was printing via the local connection (i.e. USB), and reinstall the driver, this time to print via the network connection (i.e. wirelessly).

(Actually, your printer does not have to be connected wirelessly. If it has an Ethernet connection, you could connect it to the router that way if you wanted to. But the point is, it should be connected only to the router, either with an Ethernet cable or via wifi; it should not be connected to any computer with a USB cable, nor should any computer print directly to the printer via the printer's internal hotspot.)

Once the printer is connected only to the network, and not directly connected to any computer, I believe your problem will be solved.

grandad69 · 21 Jan 2018

Hi, thanks for both the responses.
I've been to the Epson site and downloaded the Epson Product Setup utility as there was nothing specific re wifi issues. Having run the setup it updated the printer with a new driver and, I guess, anything else it needed.
I also started to look into Homegroups and discovered that my wife's laptop had its own homegroup as well as the one on the pc. From the pc I joined the homegroup on the laptop and then joined the homegroup on the pc from the laptop. On the laptop I added the detected printer and have been able to test print to the Sx218 printer successfully. So, so far so good. I'll monitor the situation to see that printing continues.