Windows can not connect to the printer. What to do?

Without such an important device as a printer, nowhere. It makes life much easier, allowing you to print out all sorts of information. But what to do when Windows can not connect to the printer, and the printout of the document needs to be done as quickly as possible? The article will consider in detail this problem and ways to solve it.

Why Windows can not connect to the printer

If it were not for the computer and the printer connected to it, we would still write by hand, spending a lot of time and effort on it. And if everything is clear from the PC - it does not work, so you can not create a document, then everything is different with a printing machine. We address it when everything is ready, and it remains only to translate information from the monitor screen to paper. The reasons why the printer does not connect to the computer, there may be several:

1. The device is not physically connected to the PC.
2. The printer is not installed.
3. No drivers.

Checking the connection

The first step is to check if the printer is on and the LED is on. If not, then turn on, check the connection to the network, and whether there is electricity at all. This may seem ridiculous, but often Windows can not connect to the printer for this very reason.

Next, we check the physical connection to the computer, i.e. By means of a cable. If the cable is connected, it is necessary to pull it out and connect it back. It is possible that it was not fully inserted. Maybe the problem is in the cable itself: it burned out or broke. Therefore, it is best to take somewhere the same wire from the working device and connect to ours. If the machine is working, then the problem was in the cord.

Installing the printer

Often, Windows can not connect to the printer because it is simply deleted or malfunctioning. The cause may be a virus or driver failure. In this case, the latter can remain. Therefore, we go to the "Start", then - "Devices and printers." We look, whether is necessary in the list. In case that it is not there, click "Install Printer" and "Add Local".

Click "Next" and select from the list first the manufacturer, then the model. Click Next, then the printer icon should appear. If it is there, but on it hangs an exclamation mark, delete this setting and install it again.

Put the driver

In any "Windows" there is a set of drivers for many printers. It is only necessary to connect the printer to the PC, as it immediately starts to look for the right driver in the database and installs it, after which you can start typing right away. But since operating systems were released relatively long ago, such software is not available on all models, especially new ones. Therefore, Windows can not connect to the printer, because you can not install the driver on your own. Do not exclude the cases when the drivers were simply spoiled for some reason. You can see this by clicking the right mouse button on the "My Computer" icon. In the "System Properties" click on the menu on the left side ("Device Manager"). We open the list of "Other devices" and see that the printer driver is defective (there is an exclamation mark).

Select it and delete it. If this list does not exist at all, then the reason why Windows can not connect to the printer is because the driver is simply not installed. In both cases, you need to install it.

If the printer is bought relatively recently, then a disk with software must be attached to it. It's simple - we find this disk and install its contents. If the disc is not there - it does not matter, we download the necessary "firewood" from the Internet. Go to the manufacturer's website, go to the "Support" or "Service" section, select "Download drivers". Further from the list by the brand (in most cases it can be found ahead of the name of the printer model), we find the right one, load the files and install them.

Often, the drivers for older printers for Windows 7 are presented not as an installer, but as an archive with a lot of incomprehensible files. They are installed as follows: click on "Start" / "Devices and printers". Click on "Installation" / "Add local" / "Next" / "Installation from disk".

Click "Browse", select the unzipped folder with the drivers and click "OK". Now everything is installed, the printer is working.