Networking A Printer

kah22

Here's where I'm at guys and I hope someone can help.

A friend returning to America gave me his Dell 1600n laser printer and it's working as good as the day he first got it.

My current setup is that I have a new Dell Inspiron 1764 laptop, with Windows 7 Home Premium. The 1600n printer and a Netgear Wireless Router (DG 824M). The router and printer sit in one room and if I need to print to it I take the laptop to it and connect via a usb cable.

In addition I have two homeplugs. One of the homeplugs is plugged into the router while the other is attached to the laptop which is normally kept in another room and that's the way I get my internet connection.

I've tried to network the printer by connecting an ethernet cable from the printer to one of the ethernet cables on the router. Nothing happens. I've fiddled around trying this, that and the other but more in hope than expectation as, well my experience and knowledge in this field is, shall we say, 'limited.':o:confused:

So I really want to ask two questions.

Can I network my printer this way and if so how?

I'm also aware that I may be able to go down the Homeplug route, but this would be considerably more expensive, but will it work.

Connecting via the ethernet cable would be by far the cheapest alternative.

Kevin


An after thought I've recently bouth a Sony television anyone know if this could be networked to the computer – a much friendlily way to watch movies.

JonathanAnon

Take it in steps. put the printer beside the router and cable it to it (as opposed to using the homeplugs). Make sure that when you plug the printer in to the router, that there is a light on the back of the printer (where you plug in the Ethernet cable goes in), and the equivalent light on the router.. If you press and hold the green button on the printer, it should give you a printout of the configuration, which will contain the IP address.

jpl888

I'd suggest it is the ip address which is the problem, although a lot of these things will do auto-discovery.

Can you confirm the address of the printer and the address of your router?

As Jonathananon says get a status/config page print out.

kah22

First many thanks for your reply.


OK I've removed the ethernet plugs and replaced them. On the back of the printer there are two green lights, one top, one bottom, the bottom one gives out a continuous blink, the top one a solid green light, however if I remove the ethernet cable then this light goes out.


I have managed to print a Network Printer Card Test Page by going to Menu – Network Setup – Print Sys. Data. The IP address given in the printourt is 192.168.0.5. The Netgear Routers IP address is 192.168.0.1


I've Pinged the printer and received the following:


C:\Windows\system32>ping 192.168.0.5


Pinging 192.168.0.5 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.5: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.5: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.5: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.0.5: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=255


Ping statistics for 192.168.0.5:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 33ms, Average = 16ms


Does this help any?


Kevin

JonathanAnon

The printout should also tell you it's hostname (which you should also be able to ping it by) and if the IP address is a static IP address or whether it has been assigned by DHCP on the router...

If you can ping it by hostname, the go to Printers under Control Panel and try to add it. When setting up IP Printers, I usually Add Printer, Choose Local Printer Attached To This Computer (click OFF the auto detect), Create Port : Standard TCP/IP Port, then put the hostname in the Printer Name Or IP Address field (the second field should populate automatically). That's for XP but that the other O/S should not be too different.

If you cannot ping it by hostname, it would be better to set the IP of the printer as static, and then just use this static IP with when adding the printer.

jpl888

You're welcome. The DHCP server may well give out the same address to the printer every time, so I don't think it's probably necessary to go static.

So assuming you've got the printer driver loaded, you'll need to go into the properties and tell me what "port" it's set to.

It should be a "standard TCP/IP port" and if you go into "configure" the IP address should be set to 192.168.0.5.

Assuming you've done that then you should be able to print, assuming the other port settings were auto-detected when you installed the driver.

kah22

Have got the baby up and running.

At the end of the day I removed the printer from Windows then added it back, this time been doubly sure that I'd selected Network Printer and when it came to the Find a printer by name or TCP/IP address or Hostname I put in the IP address and just followed the wizard from there.

At the end of the day it was that simple - done and dusted in five minutes.

Again many thanks for the advice and information. When you talk to people it gives you encouragement to try things

Kevin

jpl888

If it stops working first thing to check is if the IP address has changed.

If that happens then going down the static route as Johnathananon suggested will be the way forward.

It may seem daunting but there aren't that many things that can go wrong even though it is a network printer.