PC Won't Locate Printer (Windows 10)

Professor Snugglesworth

I've had my printer for a few years now, never had any issues. Then all of a sudden I've been unable to print anything.

When I hit print, I get this message:



Going through the automated process doesn't show my printer, even though it still shows up in Device Manager. I tried to click the "my printer isn't listed" option, and got this instead:



If I try to update the driver, I get this message:



Clicking troubleshoot suggests that the USB cable is too old for 3.0 ports. I tried connecting it to different ports, but still nothing.

Uninstalling the printer doesn't work, and neither does changing the USB cable. The printer itself still seems to work as it can print a test page when I hit the button, but beyond that there seems to be some sort of communication error or something else that's preventing the printer from working with my PC.

Any ideas?

wunderbar

the print spooler service not running is your culprit. That's literally the Windows service that talks to printers. I assume you've done this already, but if you haven't, the first thing is to restart your computer.

If that doesn't work, open the start menu and search for services.



in the services list you should find print spooler, list is in alphabetical order.



if it doesn't say running that means it is stopped. right click and start it. It'll either start, or give you an error that you can google.

Professor Snugglesworth

The spooler had indeed stopped, and this is the error message I got:



Did a Google search, ran a repair tool from the first result, everything seems to be fixed now.

Thank you so much! Any idea why this was turned off?

wunderbar

the short answer: computers are dumb.

the longer answer: it really could be anything, because computers are dumb.

Shadowfire

wunderbar wrote: »

the short answer: computers are dumb.

the longer answer: it really could be anything, because computers are dumb.

Best answer: fuck printers.