Printers not showing in Devices and Printers menu

Hello all,

When adding a new network printer, users are able to add the printer and install the driver. The printer appears to install successfully: can be printed to from documents (Word, Excel etc), appears in Device Manager, appears in Print Management and appears in a customised menu I've created "%windir%\explorer.exe /e,::{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}" which lists only printers.

However the printer icon takes a good 20+ minutes to appear in the standard Devices and Printers menu.

I have tried restarting the print spooler and enabling Bluetooth as suggested in other threads but neither prompt the printer entry to appear in the Devices and Printers menu. Has anyone seen this before and found a resolution?

Thank you.

April 24th, 2015 7:18am

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April 27th, 2015 6:58am

Hi,

I apologize if you understand it wrongly, your network printer worked for about 20 minutes then disappear from Devices and Printers.

If this issue happens to all of your client machines, we have to consider that it is an issue caused by printer driver or network connection.

To troubleshoot Printer issues

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/troubleshoot-printer-problems

Start the Print Spooler service in Services.msc rather than rebooting.  Check for the latest drivers for the devices.

Try ping this printer when issue occurs if it has an IP address.

Regards,

D. WU

April 28th, 2015 9:41pm

Hi,

I apologize if I understand it wrongly, your network printer worked for about 20 minutes then disappear from Devices and Printers.

If this issue happens to all of your client machines, we have to consider that it is an issue caused by printer driver or network connection.

To troubleshoot Printer issues

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/troubleshoot-printer-problems

Start the Print Spooler service in Services.msc rather than rebooting.  Check for the latest drivers for the devices.

Try ping this printer when issue occurs if it has an IP address.

Regards,

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
April 29th, 2015 1:39am

Good morning,

No, the issue is that the printer does not appear in Devices & Printers for 20 minutes. The printer itself is working correctly, drivers are installed and the network is fine as I am able to see the printer from within applications like Word and print to it.

I have tried restarting the print spooler service and using the latest drivers. There is no point pinging the printer as I am able to print to it.. so it's not a network connection issue.

April 29th, 2015 5:39am

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.

So eventually the printer will show up in Devices and Printers. I am supposing this printer works right with applications but you cannot select it as the default from Devices and Printers because it doesn't list. I have seen similar cases before and no perfect answer yet.

Some users reported that for \\server\printershare if you remove spaces from the share name, that will resolve those printers from showing offline sometime later. You have to create the share manually because by default it will offer the description name with spaces.

If the issue still persists,

Please take the following steps to have a troubleshoot :

Temporary disable firewall and antivirus program, and re-connect the network printer for test. Also update the printer driver to the latest version

Run this fix it tool to have a check .

Diagnose and fix printer and printing problems automatically

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/printing_problems/en-hk

Regards,

D. Wu

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May 3rd, 2015 9:16pm

Unfortunatly we were still unable to resolve this.

As a workaround we are creating a 'Printers' folder for all users on their startmenu which updates in real t

May 22nd, 2015 6:30am

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