This is the common problem that I have seen.  Many times, the driver for a printer is correctly installed on your computer, but it’s not set to the right port.  For instance, it may be set to USB1 instead of USB2, or LPT2 instead of LPT1.

When you print, you’ll see that the printer is in your list of printers, but you won’t actually see a successful print.  Your computer keeps a list of available printer ports, whether virtual or actual physical ports on your computer.  Each driver installed (assuming you have more than one printer) can be set to use any one of those ports.  When you install a printer initially, the software that came with the printer usually creates or identifies the correct port and you never have to worry about it.  Sometimes that doesn’t guarantee that your ports won’t get crossed.

To confirm which port a particular printer is connected to, simply go into your printers folder (Control Panel –> Printers), right click the printer you’re attempting to troubleshoot, click properties, then click the ports tab.

You’ll see a list of all of the ports that your computer currently has registered.  You’ll also see a checkbox in one of those ports for the printer you’re investigating.  If your printer isn’t printing, but it seems to be online, make sure that the correct port is selected for your printer.  If you do not know what the correct port is, you may need to contact your printer’s manufacturer, or simply uninstall and re-install your printer per your printer’s installation manual (usually a quickstart page that came with the printer.)

Sometimes your printer will not only be set to the wrong port, but it will have the wrong driver associated with the printer icon in the printers folder.  If this is the case, you can set the correct driver under the Advanced tab in the Properties of that printer.  (Right click the printer –> click properties –> click the Advanced tab).  There’s a drop down list that may be improperly set.

If the driver you need isn’t in that list, you probably need to reinstall your printer using the disk that came with the printer.  If you don’t have the original disk, you can go to the manufacturer’s website and download the latest driver from their support section.

I hope this was somewhat informative.

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