In the K-8 school where I'm part-time tech coordinator we have 38 netbooks running Windows 7. Usually students can use them to print to any of the 3 network printers configured on them. Occasionally the students cannot print. When this occurs, if I look at "printer properties" the printer has no ports. If I uninstall and then reinstall a printer, it's possible to print to it. Or, if I reboot, the connection will be re-established and work OK. My guess is that Windows is trying to resolve the printer connections before the netbooks have established a wireless connection to the network. There's a network drive to which the netbooks connect, and it has an icon with a red X - seemingly indicating that there's no connection, but in fact the network drive works just fine, even with the red X. The three printers are shared via a Windows 2003 server. Their physical connections to the network vary. One uses built-in networking (on a LaserJet 4000), one uses a tiny external print server, not sure (would need to go look it up) how the third one is connected. Is there a way to delay Windows in its attempts to connect to the printers, or is there some other strategy that may get the printers connecting more reliably? We have about 18 notebook PCs running Windows XP, also connecting wirelessly, but they do not have these printer connectivity problems. Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

Hi, Does the issue occur on each Windows 7 machine or only certain one? This issue can occur by incompatible driver or incorrect network settings. To troubleshoot the issue, please perform the following steps. 1. Upgrade the NIC driver to the latest one. 2. Please refer to the following steps to add a network printer. a. Click “Devices and Printers”. b. Click “Add a printer”. c. Choose “Add a local printer” and click on “Create a new port”. d. Select “Local Port” and click “Next”. e. Type in "[\\computer name\printer name]" (without quotation marks) for the Port Name and click “OK”. Example: If the computer you wish to connect to is named ComputerA and the printer is called PrinterA then the path would be \\ComputerA\PrinterA f. Please select a correct driver from the list. If the model is not listed, please click the “Windows Update” button. Wait for the process finishes and try to find the driver again. 3. Assign a static IP address and DNS address on the machine for a test. Thanks, Novak