losing connectivity to my printer

[jlatenight1]

My printer is usually in standby mode until I send a job to it then it wakes up.  I have a static IP set on it and when I send a job to it it times out.  It shows as inactive in the fios router.  If I power cycle the printer, it spits the job out and shows as active.  How can I set the printer to permanently active?  Dumb to have to restart the printer every time I print something.

[dexman]

What is the make & model of the printer 🤔

[jlatenight1]

It's a canon MF210

[dexman]

My unit is a Canon MF743. I also have it set up with a static IP address. I logged into my 3100 router to check on the status of the unit and it shows online.

As a part of troubleshooting, has an attempt been made to factory default the 210's programming and start from scratch? Is the unit connected via Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable?

[jlatenight1]

Thanks for the help.  It's connected via Ethernet.  I'll try resetting to factory and setting it up again and see what happens.

[Cang_Household · Accepted solution]

The status indicator in Fios router is not accurate for devices that rarely contact the Internet. Active means the device sends a packet to the router to be routed to the Internet. For a local network printer to work properly, it does not need to send a packet to the router. As long as you can ping the IP address of the printer, the printer is connected to the network and is responsive network-wise.

I think you are using a Windows machine to print. After sending a job that stuck, go to your Windows Task Manager > Service, stop then start the spooler service. Your printing job would resume. This is not a network issue, but a Windows printing service issue. It has nothing to do with drivers and has something to do with Windows kernel. The only long term solution is to switch your operating system to Linux, which would give you more control over drivers and hardware.

[dexman]

Something that Cang_Household said just had me think of another angle. The 210 is an older model (the user documentation is dated 2015).

If the computer is running Windows, is it W10 or W11? 🤔

If worse comes to worse, post a topic on Canon's help forums.  🙂

[jlatenight1]

I think you're on to something.  It's Win10.  It's probably windows.  I'll keep an eye on it and report back.  Thanks so much for your help guys/girls.

[jlatenight1]

I have to bump this up.  My wife can print from her PC (wifi) to the printer when it's asleep and it prints fine.  When I try it fails, and I get "host unreachable" when I ping it.  It seems there's a routing issue between ethernet devices maybe?  I have a static IP on the printer and on the Fios router.  What could be causing this?  I tried restarting the print spooler as suggested above and it doesn't help.  The only way I can get a print to come out is to power cycle the printer and the queued job comes right out.

[dexman]

Are both computers the same make & model running the same OS?

Knowing that one computer has no problems printing tends to eliminate an issue with the network. Otherwise both computers would have problems.

I looked back and spotted my notation that the printer is a circa 2015 model.

As a last resort, would it be possible to have Windows reloaded onto the troubled computer? 🤔