Hey guys- This has nothing to do with DSMs but I feel like you guys may be my best shot at figuring this out......

Ive got a fair amount of time into this strange problem, and have made zero progress.

I have a pretty nice Brother laser printer (MFC-L2740DW) which was a little on the expensive side. Ive had it for about 3 years now and it has always done the job.

Starting yesterday, it will not respond to any print commands. My PC tells me that the printer needs to be turned on in order to print.........its on.

Printer status : Offline

A google search "why is my printer offline" yielded hundreds of pages on "bringing a printer back online" and similar but it was all crap.

I wiped anything to do with the printer off my hard drive and reinstalled the drivers.......same results.
Printer is hardwired to PC via USB cord.

I was able to get the printer to actually print a useless error report through the touch screen on the printer itself, which I attached a photo of. So the printers ability to print is just fine, it just wont communicate. Tried both hardwire and wireless.......nothing.

Has anyone else ever experienced this? Its always worked great until this issue presented itself yesterday.

Ive got shipping labels I need to print, my daughters last few days of home school to get through, and Im always printing info to take to the shop with me........this sucks. For what I spent on this thing, I feel that I should not have to worry about a printer for at least 6-8 years......not 3.

Thank you guys for any input on this.

Have you gotten any support from their 800 #?
800-694-8578
Marty

1990TSIAWDTALON said:

Have you gotten any support from their 800 #?
800-694-8578
Marty

Click to expand...

I did not call the phone number but I did go through their online trouble shooter with one of their "agents"

I spent close to an hour on all of the obvious easy stuff they start with, which I had already tried before I got with them, then ran out of time (yesterday evening) and took a break from the whole thing.


I guess Im hoping someone who has had this happen to them notices my post and can tell me if I need top replace this thing or if it can be repaired........Im afraid something to do with its ability to transmit/receive is cooked inside it.

Typically this comes from a firmware issue. Have you tried hard-rebooting it and refreshing all connections? My HP printer does it sometimes after long periods of no use, and I just refresh everything and it kicks into gear.

ThunderChild said:

Typically this comes from a firmware issue. Have you tried hard-rebooting it and refreshing all connections? My HP printer does it sometimes after long periods of no use, and I just refresh everything and it kicks into gear.

Click to expand...

Yes-those where some of the 1st things I tried.

Whats got me worried is the fact that it will not respond to any commands- hardwired or wireless

It doesn't have any updates for it that need installed that you know of does it?

I'd try a factory reset, and then try hard loading any recent updates. you probably uncovered a bug in the firmware somewhere, and it's not going to go away until it's completely wiped again.

Have you selected the access point 5GHz on your PC? If you have, switch back to 2.4GHz.

Did you check this link?
https://www.reviversoft.com/answers...ther-printer-error-ts-02/oldest?ncr=1&lang=en

You may have a corrupted registry causing you problems.
#1 Go into your control panel and delete your printer..
#2 Restart the computer and reinstall the printer with the disk that it came with.
#3 This is a basic reinstall...
I can not tell you how to regedit to go deeper into the computer because one mistake in there could cause your computer to crash.
This has worked for me every time

We use Brother printers exclusively now, since we have both Mac and PC computers and devices. The L2740DW is one of the printers we have. Brothers work well, right up until they don't.

We have wrestled with the "Offline" result more than once, and you have to either connect to the network wirelessly, and unplug the ethernet cord, or, turn off the wireless function and reboot it after you have plugged in a cord. The network settings should be set to "DHCP" so that when the printer reboots, it will grab an available address.

If the goal is to print the labels, and do further diagnosis later, how about attaching a USB cable and knock it out?

Also, try printing from another device to make sure it isn't corrupted drivers on the computer, as was mentioned above.

You guys are awesome- thank you all for the ideas and suggestions!

Ive been at the shop ignoring this all day so Im going to put some more time into it now.

Widgmaster said:

You may have a corrupted registry causing you problems.
#1 Go into your control panel and delete your printer..
#2 Restart the computer and reinstall the printer with the disk that it came with.
#3 This is a basic reinstall...
I can not tell you how to regedit to go deeper into the computer because one mistake in there could cause your computer to crash.
This has worked for me every time

Click to expand...

This was the answer. Thanks widg.

I did this last night, almost. I deleted all of the Brothers program files off the hard drive but I never deleted the actual device.

So tonight I deleted the device in addition to the program files and restarted the PC. The restart triggered a windows update.

I feel like microsoft does crap like this to force you to do their updates.......which is something I always avoid. Every time they tell me to update all I can think is "leave me alone im busy". Anyways- Next I reinstalled the software package and it fired right up. Wish I had thought to delete the device from the start........but I was too busy throwing a tantrum .

Widg- is there a way I could have achieved these results by changing something in the registry editor?

Nope. Just one of the dozens of things that once in a while eventually happen to all of us that are forced (in the real world for compatibility reasons) to use MS.

It makes me feel like the machine is not even mine and that it has zero privacy at all. It just keeps getting worse too.

Once mine got so bad (usually from too many old outdated applications I had installed and extra junk that gets automatically installed behind your back, even though I had all install permissions turned off - thank you MS), that I had to reinstall EVERYTHING (OS and ALL my programs) from scratch after reformatting the hard drive. It took a year before I had them all running properly again.

But in your case perhaps a Registry Clean would help after uninstalling all programs you never use.

I am so glad I was of help to you @EVLGSX . See ... us 3G Canadian guys are not so bad after all Eh"

luv2rallye said:

Once mine got so bad (usually from too many old outdated applications I had installed and extra junk that gets automatically installed behind your back, even though I had all install permissions turned off - thank you MS), that I had to reinstall EVERYTHING (OS and ALL my programs) from scratch after reformatting the hard drive. It took a year before I had them all running properly again.

But in your case perhaps a Registry Clean would help after uninstalling all programs you never use.

Click to expand...

Exactly! behind your back.

Aside from my main desktop- I purchased a laptop with a very weak chipset and a very small hardrive just to use for ECMlink/ECU Flash. Thats all its for. I keep it disconnected from the internet now because their updates have claimed every bit of space on the hard drive......... and they now complain that there is not enough space on my HD to do their updates.........joke.

And it seems to be a fight to reclaim that space.

I run CCleaner (free) periodically to free up disk space and cookies (and you can specify which cookies to leave for sites you want them in tact). There's also "jv16 PowerTools" which has a registry cleaner and has a free 14 day trial period.

Some times I use a program called Glary Utility ... It`s a program like CCleaner but also has a registry editor and much more . It can also find duplicate files easy ...The best part ... Its free

https://www.glarysoft.com/