Laptop can't find Wireless Printer

Is there a factory reset for the printer? Might be worth a go if there is

Thanks, will try that

Is there a companion app you can use to find/set it up? HP have a tools app that I think I used a long time ago. Not needed it recently though, especially if the printer and computer is on the same network.  

Potentially "browsing" the network might be disabled on your new router.
However do you know the ip address that your printer has?
If so you can add it manually - Printer settings, add printer, add manually, my printer wasn't listed, add by IP address (or something similar but it'll be obvious once you click add printer...)
Before that though, if you know how to open a command prompt you can see if it is contactable by typing ping 192.168.1.xxx (substitute the 192. etc bit for whatever IP address your printer has..) if it says Reply from 192. etc then your device is reachable on the network and you should be able to add it.

Thanks both above, will try when home tonight

if it's an old hp printer they don't work on a mixed 2.4 / 5ghz wireless network. I had to switch off the 5g side of the network to get it to reliably connect.

is the old wifi network dead? if not the printer might be connected to that

see if you can find the ip address on the printer screen somewhere, it'll likely be something like 192.168.0.23, then run "ping 192.168.0.23" on your laptop (start.. run.. then type CMD, press ok, then type the ping command onto that black screen). It'll tell you whether at a network level the devices are connecting or not. It might be that your new wifi provider has a guest network and one of the devices is on that

Have you considered chucking the printer out of the window? This works best if you have the option to print at work?

I threw my HP wireless printer in the bin after continual problems and went back to the cheapest printer I could find that I just plugged a cable into to print. It just works.  (So far).

Thanks again everyone

WFH now.

Old network definitely not working. Old modem now at the recycling centre

I have the IP address of the printer on the new network. Printer has confirmed it is on the new network

It is a Brother DCP-J315W printer a few years old

Printer in same room as laptop

New modem is Fritz!Box 7530. Laptop tells me that properties of Fritzbox are Protocol wi fi 4, 2.4 GHz. amongst a lot of other things.

Done the ping to printer IP address several times and get "Destination net unreachable"

Does this help anyone ?. Maybe older printer not currently compatible with new fibre to modem network as suggested

Is printer definitely configured for DHCP in the network settings or does it have a static IP which worked on your old network? <br /><br />
Can you post the IP address of the printer and also the IP address of your laptop. <br /><br />
run the command ipconfig in that same command window that you did the ping from and post the output here…

Are you 100% sure the printer is connected to the new wireless network? Worth going through the connection process again. Also worth logging onto the router and looking for a list of connected devices to see if the printer is connected.

EDIT Doesn’t really matter where the printer is as long as it’s connected to the wireless network - it isn’t directly wirelessly connected to your laptop so the distance between the two is irrelevant.

also if you log into your router's admin page, it should show all connected devices from where you can tell if it thinks the laptop and printer are both alive

Yes good point on connections to network and not between devices, not thinking straight here

Printer has confirmed connection OK to Fritzbox

Will follow up on the other actions, probably tomorrow

Thanks again everyone

I cant see DHCP but there is TCP/IP and an IP address was generated after I put in the Wi Fi password for the new network.

Managed to log onto the Fritzbox - it does show our Laptops and TV connected to the Fritzbox but not the Printer.

Will reset the printer again tomorrow and try again and follow up on the other actions.

Need to go out now, thanks everyone

Is it safe to post all the IP addresses on a public forum ?

Is it safe to post all the IP addresses on a public forum ?

yes.

Managed to log onto the Fritzbox – it does show our Laptops and TV connected to the Fritzbox but not the Printer.

Will reset the printer again tomorrow and try again and follow up on the other actions.

it might be the box has a guest network your printer is connecting to (maybe) and so isn't visible anywhere.

https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-Box-7590/294_Setting-up-Wi-Fi-guest-access-in-the-FRITZ-Box/

Is it safe to post all the IP addresses on a public forum ?

Yes as they are internal addresses and every home with Internet will use the same pool of addresses by and large.
Its pretty much the same as saying the place where you eat is the dining room and the sleeping room is the bedroom. That info on it's own reveals nothing about your house or where it is. Your internal network just names the devices with an IP address from a small pool of addresses that all home networks use. Usually they start with 192.168.1 (however I am keen to know if your printer IP starts with 169 instead of 192). I am also keen to know if your printer and laptop are on the same subnet hence wanting to know the addresses they have and wanting to see the output of the ipconfig command.
If your results from the ping command said destination unreachable rather than request timed out then your printer is definitely not on your network on the ip address that you were using and never has been.

6. Have tried manual set up with IP address etc but still no good

How?

I don't know Brother printers. I do know that our HP was a complete temperamental shit until I gave it a reserved IP address and it finally calmed its tits. But you cannot just pull numbers out of your arse and expect it to work. Explain your process and, as others have said, share your settings here so we can check them.

Currently away from home but had my notes here, and thanks for the explanation of IP addresses

There is no additional guest network set up on Fritzbox

IP address of printer is 192.168.001.235

Done the ping to printer IP address several times and get “Destination net unreachable”

Next step is factory reset / re install the printer to the Fritzbox wi fi network and see if that fixes it.

Thanks again everyone

Give up, its not a solvable problem, in 200 years time the Martian direct-to-brain-ar-chip forums will have plenty of threads on this

It is a Brother DCP-J315W printer a few years old

My mum has a brother all in one and it's an utter bastard, loses comms for no reason all the time, I think we narrowed it down to if you go into the lock screen.

IP address of printer is 192.168.001.235

Subnet mask? Address of the router?

Where did you get that number from? How/where did you configure it, manually on the printer?

Plug something like a keyboard into the slots. Sometimes doing something else can kick the system into realizing something has happened.

A quick network primer which might explain why I'm asking what I'm asking. (Disclaimer for the network guys, this is a simplification and I am not a network engineer.)

There are three ways of allocating IP addresses. The one we're all used to at home is Automatic. This is called DHCP. A computer (printer, other device) yells across your network "hey, I'm new" and a DHCP server will reply "cool, here's your address." This DHCP server is your Internet router, its job is to ensure every device has a unique IP. Typically it will try to reallocate the same addresses to the same devices - they have an expiry period - but there is no guarantee that this will happen. Generally this doesn't matter.

The second is Manual, where you ignore the DHCP server and type in the numbers yourself on the device. The third I'll come back to.

The DHCP server will have a range of addresses it can give out. We call this a Scope. Your Scope may be (say) 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.200. If you manually assign an IP of 192.168.1.235, this is outside the Scope. This is a good thing, because the DHCP cares not for your manual settings. If instead you'd manually configured it as ...135 then this is a potential problem because the DHCP server will cheerfully dole out that address to another device and then both devices will fall off the network due to a duplicate IP. And if you'd configured any of those when your network is actually 192.168.[color=red]0[/color].x then it's never going to work.

The third way is Reservations. Here you tell the DHCP server "when this device appears, always give it this address." You associate the MAC (non-changing hardware) address with an in-scope IP address and the server is fully aware of it.

--

For most practical purposes, manual addressing is a bad idea outside testing purposes. It's extra admin and the potential for error is large. In my specific case I had an issue in that if at DHCP address renewal time the printer's address changed, it'd bollocks everything up and I had to go round re-adding it to every other device. The solution here wasn't a Manual IP on the printer, it was a Reservation for it on the router.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves now. 😁

Oh, and,

The question oceanskipper asked about 169 addresses is a classic symptom of a device looking for a DHCP server, failing to find one and so making something up. I didn't think printers did this but it's plausible I suppose.

Probably been said already but new router means admin access the router, change the SSID, password, DNS, and IP address range to ones that you favor. Then reboot and you don’t have to suffer changes on many other devices.

For example
MyNetwork
Biglongcomplexpasswordthatisresistanttohacking
9.9.9.9
10.0.0.0

I didn’t think printers did this but it’s plausible I suppose.

I know large MFDs do it but domestic ones I am not so sure. 

Doing what I can here whilst not at home !

Printer IP address above was generated by the printer after I put in the Fritzbox password Wi Fi password

Subnet mask is 000.000.000.000

Same for Gateway

There is a long Node Name BRW002258154BE5

Wins Server DNS primary 192.168.001.001

Same for DNS server

Appreciate everyone's help here, and confirm I have not made any of these numbers up. They are all from the printer network screen

Subnet mask is 000.000.000.000

Same for Gateway

That I suspect is your problem right there...

Suggest factory reset of the printer. It would be useful to know what the output of an ipconfig command run on your laptop is though...

Subnet mask is 000.000.000.000

That's why it doesn't work then. This is not a valid mask (it technically is but, eh, that's complicated). It almost certainly should read 255.255.255.0 on a home network.

confirm I have not made any of these numbers up. They are all from the printer network screen

Where did the printer get them from? There's no manual configuration been done at all on the printer, it's got its config from the router?

Thanks again. I will factory reset the printer when home and try again.

All those numbers above were generated by the printer, no manual inputs at all from me

Will do the IP ping and IP config and post the results if it still doesn't connect after the factory reset.

If you know how to edit the network settings on that printer you could go through them all and see if you can find one that can be changed to “DHCP”. Likely under IP or TCP/IP settings. Change it and restart the printer then check the settings again. Although if it’s not currently set to  configure itself using DHCP and has no subnet mask set I have no idea how it was working before. The other option is to populate the subnet mask and gateway with the correct settings which can be verified by the results of the ipconfig command. Subnet most likely 255.255.255.0 as Cougar says, gateway likely to be 192.168.1.254 or 192.168.1.1

Printer now connected ! and it works !

Now home with some time, I reset the printer and also rebooted it

Router shows what is connected to the Wi Fi:

our 2 mobile phones

definitely the printer (gives the node), then Samsung laptop and Samsung TV

Thanks to everyone who has contributed , and I have learnt a lot about IP and wouldn't have known how to get into the router otherwise.

Yay. Nice one OP. 👍