I Suck At Network Printers

Nothing says thrilling like spending Friday night at home in front of a computer. Sadly, that is what I did last night. Although in my defense, I was troubleshooting a network printer issue at home. Too bad I suck at network printers.

The issue at hand was that the new laptop was not communicating properly with the network printer. What probably is a simple issue to resolve actually took me most of the night because I had to run back and forth between the router and printer. My router is on the first floor. My printer is on the second floor.

One of the reasons I had to go to the router is because I had to physically reset the router to its factory standards. I couldn't remember the login credentials to the router. Hence, the reset. Hopefully I'll be able to remember it months from now. For anyone curious, there is a little reset button on your router that you just hold in.

Anyway, once the router was reset, I was able to log into the router and see the devices connected to the router. Needless to say, I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling the printer on the original laptop. That process allowed the printer to be installed onto the network, which then let me add it to the new laptop.

Once everything was all set, including verifying that the printer was in fact connected to the router, I printed test pages from the old and new laptops. Both print jobs worked without any problems. And before I knew it, the night was essentially over. Thrilling, I know.