Why Your Printer Won't Connect: Wireless Printer and Scanner Fixes

A wireless printer that won't connect is one of the most common calls we get, and it's almost never a broken printer. Printers are needy about their Wi-Fi in ways laptops and phones aren't, so they're the first thing in the house to fall off the network and the last to come back. Here's why that happens and how to get it printing again.

Why wireless printers drop off Wi-Fi more than anything else

A printer sits in a corner and gets used a few times a week. Between jobs it goes to sleep, and a sleeping printer on a weak or busy signal can quietly lose its spot on the network. Your phone reconnects the instant you pick it up. The printer just sits there showing "offline" until you go looking.

Two things make it worse than other devices. First, most printers cling to the 2.4GHz band, which is the older, slower, more crowded one. Second, the connection between your computer and the printer relies on drivers and a Windows service that both have to be working, so there are more places for the chain to break. When people assume the printer is dead, the real problem is almost always one of these:

The one that catches everyone: you changed your router or Wi-Fi password

This is worth its own heading because it's so common and so confusing. Get a new router, switch internet providers, or change your Wi-Fi password, and everything in the house reconnects on its own. Except the printer. It stored the old network name and password internally and it's still looking for a network that no longer exists.

The printer won't fix this itself. You have to walk over to it and connect it to the new Wi-Fi by hand, using the buttons and little screen on the printer or the manufacturer's app. Until you do, it'll show offline no matter what you try from the computer.

The printer stored the old network name and password internally, and it's still looking for a network that no longer exists.

Get it back online, in order

Work down this list and stop when it prints.

1. Restart all three

Turn off the printer, the router, and the computer. Give it 30 seconds. Turn the router back on first and let its lights settle, then the printer, then the computer. This clears the most common cause on its own, and it costs you two minutes.

2. Reconnect the printer to Wi-Fi by hand

On the printer itself, go into the network or wireless setup menu, pick your Wi-Fi network, and enter the password. On many printers there's a Wi-Fi button you hold until it starts searching. This is the step that fixes a printer that fell off after any network change, and it's the one people skip.

3. Move the printer closer to the router, or the router closer to the printer

Printers tolerate weak signal badly. If the printer lives in a back office or a basement two walls away from the router, that's likely the whole problem. Move it closer as a test. If it connects fine nearby but drops in its usual spot, you've got a coverage problem, not a printer problem.

4. Clear the stuck print queue

Sometimes the printer's connected fine but Windows has jammed. Jobs pile up "pending" and nothing moves. Open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, open your printer, and cancel everything in the queue. If that doesn't clear it, restart the Print Spooler: type "services" in the Start menu, open Services, find Print Spooler, right-click it, and choose Restart.

5. Update or reinstall the driver

The driver is the software that lets Windows talk to the printer, and a Windows update can quietly replace it with the wrong one or break it. If the printer's on the network but the computer still can't see it, remove the printer from Printers & scanners, download the current driver from the manufacturer's site (not a random driver-updater tool), and add it back fresh.

When the scanner stops but printing still works

All-in-one machines love to do this: printing is fine, but scanning does nothing. It's a separate piece of software from the printing side, so it breaks separately, usually after a Windows update swaps a driver or changes a permission. Reinstalling the scanner software from the manufacturer, the same way as the printer driver above, is what fixes it most of the time. If Windows is throwing other odd behaviour at the same time, the update may have broken more than the scanner, and that's worth looking at more broadly.

Office printers are almost always a network problem

If a shared office printer keeps dropping for everyone, or works for one desk and not another, that's rarely the printer. It's shared-printer permissions, an IP address that shifted, or a network that isn't stable enough to keep everyone connected. A printer with a fixed IP address and a network set up to hold it steady stops most of this. A stable business network also quietly fixes the file-sharing and connection hiccups that tend to show up alongside the printer trouble.

Keeping it from happening again

A few habits prevent most repeat visits:

• Set the printer to a fixed IP address so it stops moving around
• Keep it on 2.4GHz and within decent range of the router
• Update the printer's firmware once in a while
• Use the real manufacturer driver, not a third-party updater
• When you change routers or passwords, expect to reconnect the printer by hand

When it's worth calling someone

If you've reconnected it, moved it closer, cleared the queue, and reinstalled the driver and it still won't stay on, the trouble is usually the network underneath it, not the printer. Weak coverage where the printer lives, an unstable connection, or an office setup that keeps losing devices all need someone to test the actual signal and settings rather than guess from the computer.

That's the sort of thing we sort out on a visit: get the printer, the scanner, the computers, and the Wi-Fi all talking to each other and staying that way.

See our Wi-Fi and networking help if you'd rather hand it off.