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We are having a problem that I haven't seen before and can find no answers to online.

A desktop running Windows 7 is unable to print using network printers. When the user tries, no matter what printer it is, he get's the following message when using Microsoft Office applications:

"Current printer is unavailable. Select another printer."

When the end user uses Outlook we get the message:

"Printing is not available. There are no printers installed. You can select and configure a printer in Windows Control Panel."

Now here is the confusing part, if we reboot the pc it works fine for a little while and then goes back to the same old same old. The printers are working fine for every other user as well so I believe it is the user's machine. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

Edit: I'd like to add in that some people were having luck disabling snmp for the printers. Restarting the print spooler doesn't seem to do anything.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You do not state whether or not the printer is visible in the printer control panel. Also, what is it's status?

It seems that your PC is losing the connection to the print server. Take a look at the event logs on this PC.

Also you can try to "forcefully refresh" connection with:

RunDll32.EXE printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /dn /n \\PrintServer\Printer
RunDll32.EXE printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /n \\PrintServer\Printer

First line removes the network printer and second one add's it. \\PrintServer\PrintShare needs to be replaced with actual print server name or IP and printer name. Lines need to be added for each printer. The easiest way is to create a batch file.

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Try a PCL5 driver instead of PCL6 or better yet a PostScript Driver.

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  • This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post.
    – Kevin Panko
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 15:53
  • Thank You Kevin. The user doesn't really have a question anyway, he's describing a problem and I'm describing a possible fix.
    – MDT Guy
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 15:56
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This is not exactly an answer, but as technical support I have to test many printers with colleages, I see many problems trying to print test. The most common is, if the printer is a Network Printer Server, it is connected to the network and have an IP number. The driver of the printer on Windows must have the printer port addressing the right IP. Sometimes I found they have more than one printer driver, they addressed the right printer IP, but they are trying to print on the other one. Anyway, I'd be able to get a correct answer only if I see the problem happening and doing my research on site, that is not always possible. Ah, one more thing. When I try to print, and the IP is not the right one, Windows 7 puts the printer offline. Just putting the right IP Port sometimes doesn't change the offline status, so you have to tell Windows to make it Online. This happened to me several times.

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