We have struggled with oddball printing issues several times. I think I may have posted about it here before. Yes. Here it is.
http://computerhaven.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=643Sometimes one computer would get the Printer Offline message, but not another, sometimes none of them. I messed and finagled for hours, and then we might have a few months where things went smoothly. Then it would happen again. A few days ago, we started getting a C000 error. We turned the printer off and back on, and occasionally something would print, but the error was happening most of the time. According to a search, that error seemed to be something with the printhead, so we went out last night and bought a new printer. We set it up, printed test pages, went to bed. This morning my husband tried print something and got a "Printer Offline" message. I printed something from my laptop just fine.
Now we are wondering if the whole issue with the other one was something entirely different and we bought a new printer for nothing? I realize that these are totally different error messages, but we just seem to have mysterious printer issues over and over, and have never figured out why. That's why I'm posting this in the network section this time. If it's not where it should be, I'm sorry.
On our home network, we have:
Desktop machine, running Vista
2 laptops, both with Windows 7
Our sons also both have computers, but never print, though I think one may have set his up at one point
Belkin router
Old printer was a Canon MP620
New printer is an HP 8600
With the old printer, the big computer was wired, others were wireless. Now all are wireless. Desktop and my laptop both print fine.
I remember that we have gotten, a couple of random times (not when printing was messing up, I don't think) a message on the desktop that there is an IP address conflict--could that be the issue?