I had an issue where printer queues on Windows Server 2012 were showing as Offline. They worked perfectly fine though. I could ping the printers, so it wasn’t that SMNP was being blocked. The strange fix was to go into the Printer Properties Ports tab Configure Port button. You can see the “Epson printer offline Windows 10” error if the device is not properly configured. Even you can see this issue if the printer is ready to print but the computer is unable to detect the device. When this error occurs, next, the Epson printer becomes unusable. There are many causes for this error.

My Printer Is Offline Hp Windows 10

From time to time we notice that some connected network printers go offline, stop printing and print jobs begin to queue on the print servers running Windows Server. In this article we’ll consider why a network printer may go to offline state and how to fix this problem without printer re-installation or print server restart.

Open the Print Management console on your print server, find the printer with the Queue Status = Offline state, open its print queue properties and make sure that the “Use Printer Offline” option is not checked in its settings.

Then make sure that the printer is turned on and accessible over the network (check printer availability using ping by IP address, make sure that you can open the printer management web interface).

How does Windows determine network printer availability status? In Windows 7 and newer, by default the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used to query the network printer state. The print server sends an SNMP request to the printer and waits for a response. If no SNMP response has been received from the printer, such a printer is considered unavailable and goes offline on the print server. Let’s see how to configure SNMP protocol settings for network printers on Windows print server.

First of all, make sure that your printer supports SNMP. Open your network printer management web interface and make sure that SNMP is enabled in the printer settings and the community name used for it is public.

Find your printer in the Print Management console, open its properties and go to the Ports tab. Open the port settings: Standard TCP/IP port -> Configure Port. If your printer supports SNMP, make sure that SNMP Status Enabled option is checked, and the Community Name is set to public.

If your printer doesn’t support SNMP, you must disable it in the printer port settings on the print server. Thus, Windows will stop sending SNMP packets to poll the device state.

Make sure that the printer state has changed to Ready.

You can find all printers with disabled SNMP on your print server using the following PowerShell cmdlet (the built-in PrintManagement module is used):

get-printerport |where {$_.snmpenabled -ne $True}|select name,protocol,description,printerhostaddress

The following PowerShell command will help you to find ports of the network printers with the SNMP community name different from Public:

get-printerport |where {$_.SNMPCommunity -ne ‘Public’ –and $_.snmpenabled -eq $True }|select name,protocol,description,printerhostaddress, snmpenabled, SNMPCommunity

If the check of SNMP settings has not helped to get your printer online, you should check the following parameters.

1. Make sure that the correct IP address of the printer is specified in the print port settings;
2. Make sure that the port type used is “Standard TCP/IP Port” instead of “WSD Port”.
   
3. Make sure that your firewalls are not blocking SNMP traffic (Ports 161/UDP and 162/UDP);
4. Remove your printer and print port completely and recreate them. Reinstall the printer drivers;
5. Restart the spooler service: Restart-Service 'Spooler'
6. You can completely disable SNMP polling for all printers on Windows by creating a new DWORD parameter with the name SNMPLegacy and the value 1 in this registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrint.

Quick one here which I thought was notable:

I had an issue where printer queues on Windows Server 2012 were showing as Offline. They worked perfectly fine though. I could ping the printers, so it wasn’t that SMNP was being blocked.

The strange fix was to go into the Printer Properties > Ports tab > Configure Port button. From there, I had to tick the option ‘SNMP Status Enabled’ and press OK (it was off by default). That didn’t fix it, but going back in and turning that option off again and pressing OK, fixed it. The printer I tested this on came online. After doing it to several more printers, each one changed it’s queue status to “Ready”.

SNMP Status Disabled:

Printer Showing Up As Offline Windows 10

SNMP Status Enabled:

Hp Printer Status Offline Windows 10

SNMP Status Disabled again:

Brother Printer Showing As Offline Windows 10

I have no idea why this was needed, or why it worked – but it did, and was reproducible many times. If you run into this problem, it might be the quick fix you need.

It’s more advanced than turning off and on again, as there was the extra step at the start of turning on :)

Hp Printer Showing As Offline Windows 10

Conspiracy theories as to the real reason for this are welcome in the comments