I have this love/hate relationship with my printer. First, I must say, it really is the best printer I have ever had as far as how well the printed pages and photos look. I had an HP printer before that was a special (and expensive) photo quality printer but after I printed something (especially a photo) I could see horizontal lines in it. When I really needed a scanner I just went to Walmart and picked up this Canon MG5220. It was on a great sale and it is also wireless. I really didn’t expect it to print so well since I didn’t pay that much for it and it is a printer/scanner/copier. It does though and I love how wonderful and sharp the printed images look.
Well, that was until I decided to print last month and the box on my computer says it is “offline”. I look over and it is on and smiling. The first 10 times or so this happened I just turned it off, unplugged it (or this doesn’t work) and re-plugged, restarted and then it worked. After that nothing seemed to work other than getting out that usb cable and connecting my computer to it.
Usually, I eventually found some kind of sweet spot accidentally and it just worked for a while.
Well, I just had some more problems with it and thought I would share in case anyone else needs the info.
I got a new laptop with windows 8 recently. I had no problems at first and it automatically found my printer and I didn’t have to set it up at all. It just printed – like magic :O)
It worked for a while until someone reset the wireless router. After adding the new wireless password it printed once and then said it was offline again. The trick that did work that time was to go to the devices and printers screen in control panel and make sure that work offline box is not checked. It is just a check box at the top left corner on my computer. After un-checking that box and restarting my computer it worked.
Then, my laptop updated to windows 8.1 and my printer wouldn’t work at all. I checked and it wasn’t even installed and couldn’t be found. After reinstalling it, it said it was “offline” and I was also getting this weird message telling me my printer can’t communicate or something and that I needed to enable Bi-directional support in the dialog box in the printers property screen…. which I couldn’t find. Anyway, I did some searching and I found out that windows 8.1 doesn’t like my printer and my printer doesn’t like it…. and they were not talking to each other.
I downloaded the new driver that makes everything happy from Canon’s website.
I installed that and restarted my computer and it still said offline. Finally I restarted my wireless router. I really didn’t have a clue how to do that but it seemed like a good idea…. so I just pulled the power plug from the back and plugged it back in.
And now it works.
My laptop likes my printer and my printer likes windows 8.1. I’m not so sure about it yet though.
If you have similar problems but have a different printer make sure and check the manufacturers website to see if they have a new driver you can install. All I did was google my printer name and found it.
If this info helps just one person I’ll be sooooo glad because I was fighting with this for way too long. Grrrr!
the many facets of donna 