Brother printer “driver unavailable” suddenly

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I have a Brother MFC-J985DW ink jet/multifunction printer that has worked on my wifi network for four years.  It still works from one of my laptops.  However, on the other, I can not get anything to print; documents, including test pages, are just stuck in the queue.  Windows 10 can see the printer fine on the network display, and still retrieve scans from it, but it will not print.

On the printers/scanners page it now lists the printer along with “driver unavailable”.  I ran the troubleshooter (no results), and followed instructions on MS support page for this error, which basically have you delete the printer & reinstall it.  No luck.  I have rebooted several times.

I am on 2004 with this week’s updates, but I have not tried to print from this laptop for a couple of months, so I don’t know that an update has anything to do with it.

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Do you see this printer under “Printers” in Device Manager?  If so, then in “Properties” does it show an error or does it say “This device is working properly”?  Would it be possible to attach a USB cable and see if it will print that way?

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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Yes, it is listed in Device Manager as a printer.

Good idea re trying a USB cable.  Will get on that tomorrow.  Thanks.

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If you are attaching the printer with a network connection, setting a static IP address (either in the printers menu or reserving the IP in your Router) may help keep your printer connected. I have found that if the IP is assigned by DHCP, the connection sometimes gets lost.

I have both a Brother MFC-J435W and  an HP OJ Pro 8720 printer attached to my network using static IPs.

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I can print from the same laptop with a USB cable attached to the printer.  Unfortunately, that is not a viable long-term solution.  When I disconnect the cable, I can still see the printer on the network, and scan from it, but print jobs just back up in the queue and on the printers & scanners page it still says “driver unavailable”.

 

any other ideas?  Thanks.

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Try uninstalling the printer from the dodgy laptop, then reboot and let Windows reinstall.

If that fails, fire up MSinfo32 (Win R, msinfo32).
Components > Problem Devices. Do you see any? Post the Device ID.

cheers, Paul

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Hi, sorry to bump this post, but,

I have exactly the same problem as OP, only difference is the model (DCP-L2530DW).
Tried everything suggested here as well all the suggestions from Microsoft and everything I could find on the web, and nothing worked. In the MSinfo32 app there are no problem deceives.
I can scan but not print via WiFi but the USB cable works.
I have the latest drivers from Brother official website, even installed them as administrator, nothing seems to work.
Hoping that you have some more ideas that I can try.
Thanks in advance.

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Have you tried turning SMB V1 back on in Windows?

cheers, Paul

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Yes, I’ve tried that. It didn’t work. My computer will recognize the devices and it will add them but it seems to only see them as scanners, not printers.

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Have you tried adding the printer manually in Settings > Devices > Printers > Add a printer and using the IP address?

cheers, Paul

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Exactly the same problem with DCP-L2532DW. Please advice what to do? Reinstalling newest driver from brother webpage does not help. Thank you in advance for your kind help.

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Have you uninstalled the printer and reinstalled it?

Is it a network printer or USB?

If network, can you ping it from your PC?
Use this command in a Command Prompt window, where IP_address is the IP number of the printer: ping IP_address

cheers, Paul

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Exactly as in post from “<span class=”bbp-reply-post-date”>February 14, 2021 at 12:04 pm</span>”. I can print and scan using USB connection. When the device is connected using WiFi I can only scan but not print. I can print using WiFi connection from other devices like phones. So the problem is with proper driver installation on Windows. I have latest drivers from Brother home page and my operating system is up to date.

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Do you scan by pressing a button on the printer or from the computer?

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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It’s not driver installation because it would not print to USB if the driver was broken.

Do you see the printer listed in Devices and Printers?
If so, look in Properties > Hardware > WSD Print Provider. You should see the IP address of the printer.

cheers, Paul

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I can scan by WiFi using button on the printer and attached software on my laptop as well.

IP address of the printer is shown correctly.

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Any idea what can be done to fix the issue?

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Are you using a router or is it a direct connection?

Brother printer can be setup to use a static IP address. (The process is clearly described in the manual.); Is the printer’s IP address static instead on dynamically assigned by Windows or the Router?

Some routers models and/or the Brother printer could handle this dynamic assignment and route the traffic correctly, others do not.

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I recently had issues with my wired networked Brother printer where some devices (computers/phones) could print to it and others could not. Can you check the IP address assigned both to your printer and to the computers that can and cannot print?

The problem I had was that my router (eero) would, by its default configuration, assign IP addresses ranging from 192.168.4.XXX to 192.168.7.XXX. My printer was assigned a 192.168.4.XXX IP address and the devices assigned 192.168.4.XXX addresses could print to the printer. Devices that were assigned 192.168.7.XXX addresses were not able to print to it.

I ended up having to change my eero network settings to manual and specify that it could only assign addresses in the 192.168.4.XXX range. It means that I will have a practical limit on how many devices I can run in my home, but I do not expect that I will exceed 200+ devices.

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anonymous wrote:

I can scan by WiFi using button on the printer and attached software on my laptop

I suspect you are using an IP address that is not in the same range as your PC.

You should not need to press buttons on the printer. Once the printer is connected to your router you should be able to see it from your PC.

cheers, Paul

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ae123 wrote:

my router (eero) would, by its default configuration, assign IP addresses ranging from 192.168.4.XXX to 192.168.7.XXX

That is not a how DHCP server should work. Addresses are only ever allocated from a single range, e.g. 192.168.4.

How did you persuade your router to allocate from multiple ranges?
Did you adjust the netmask to account for the single range? (It should be 255.255.255.0 or /24)

cheers, Paul

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Thanks for your comment. It did seem odd to me, as well. I think the subnet mask was set to something like 255.255.0.0 or 255.255.252.0 by default so that multiple ranges could be assigned.

In reviewing some additional posts on eero and reddit forums, another explanation could be that following a router restart while still set to automatic DHCP settings, the eero began assigning addresses from the new range but some devices continued on with their prior addresses. That also seems odd to me, however, because other than my printer, none have a manual IP address set.

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There is an easy way to set up printing across networks with different segments, like you had, that I have been using for years. I am tied up at the moment. But I will try to create a Topic outlining my method by this weekend (4/24-25). I’ll put it under the Network Configuration Forum.

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Thank you — I would be interested in learning more about how to access across network segments. I will try to watch for your post this weekend. Will you also reply here with a link to your new post?

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<this is in Windows 10>
First I tried Brother’s suggestion to remove and reinstall the printer driver but that did not work.

In my case to fix it I had to:
* go to the Printers & Scanners page and select the Brother printer
* select it and click “Manage”
* go to Printer Properties
* go to Ports
* change the port from the one it was set to (the port field showed text that started with
“WSD-” followed by what looked like a long MAC address and that line was labeled
“WSD port”)
to the one that looked like this:   “BRW90324B916FE4” (which was labeled “Standard
TCP/IP port”)

Then I could test/print properly.

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