Mojave Can't Find Printer

[Bantymom]

Please forgive me if I'm asking in the wrong forum. This is my first post and this is my best guess. Just let me know where I should have posted and I won't make the mistake again.

Mac Desktop (don't know how to figure out which one)
OS 10.14.6
Kyocera Printer/Copiers

Lately, when I go to print from anything on my Mac here at work, I get the very long spinning rainbow ball. When the print dialogue finally opens, it says that it can't find the printer then gives me a list of every printer in the building to choose from, all of which say "Bonjour" or "Bonjour Multifunction." (I have attached screenshots of the Printer dialog thing, the message in the drop down, and the list of printers that comes up when I select "Add Printer." Selecting any of the printers displayed does not work.)

I have sent repeated Help tickets to IT who are very sweet and who usually come out the next day. But it's like taking a dog to the vet. As soon as you walk through the door, the dog is fine. Same here. As soon as IT gets here, the printers can suddenly be found, and so IT can't really diagnose the problem.

I have tried shutting down the computer and starting it up several times or just using Reset. Sometimes that clears it up, often it doesn't. There is nothing that seems to be consistent; good behavior seems to be random. Unfortunately, just threatening to call IT does not have the same effect. Even though I have tried turning the printers off and on, I don't think it's the printers. The printers print for everyone else. I have been able to print when they are being heavily used. Today, there is very little printing and I can't print.

While writing this, I tried one more time. I turned off the wi-fi (I'm still connected by the Ethernet cable that goes to my phone), shut down, turned it back on and tried to print. And of course, because I am writing for help, it decided to connect as though there was never anything wrong. It paints me as a liar.

(I now also hear the voice of our IT guy, of course! Every time he walks in the building it decides to work! And here I was thinking I'd just gotten lucky this time.)

However, I am not fooled! I'm going to ask anyway. Is there something I should check or reset or clear? Is there something specific I should be asking IT to check? Is there some specific pattern of steps I should go through to clear up this bad behavior? Should I refresh before restarting? Restart and then refresh? Restart a certain number of times? Is there some magic ritual? Was it really just a matter of turning off the Wi-fi before restarting?

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this ramble.

Looking forward to the magic spell,
Bantymom

 

[Fishrrman]

Have you tried:

Kyocera Document Solutions

Welcome to Kyocera Document Solutions. Your journey towards successful business optimisation starts here.

www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.ae

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Who owns this equipment?

If it's your company's computer, network and printer, then it is up to them to provide you with the tools and work environment that will help you be successful at your job.

It's the IT department's responsibility to get this working. THAT'S THEIR JOB. If they deployed this gear then it it's up to them to ensure it is operational otherwise they shouldn't have deployed it in the first place.

You may need to discuss this with your manager but if this is all company property, there is absolutely no reason why you should be troubleshooting this on your own in an anonymous Q&A forum.

 

[Bantymom]

Thank you everyone for trying to help.

Yes, the school district owns the equipment and there is a lovely team of IT gentlemen who respond fairly rapidly to a request for help.

After reading your responses, I asked IT to come over again. They checked my computer and the printers and my drivers and everything is correct and as it should be.

I think I'm the one causing the problem, not the equipment, for the following reasons:

My desktop computer is no older than anyone else's.
No one else has this problem, ever.
It doesn't happen every day. Maybe once every 1-2 weeks, and sometimes I can go a month.
It seems to clear up on its own, sometimes after a couple of days, but usually sooner.
It clears up only after a shutdown and startup, but that doesn't work every time.

Since it always fixes the problem itself when I put in a help ticket, when the IT gentleman shows up, it's all good to go again and we can't reproduce the problem. If I knew what I was doing to make it happen, then I could show them, but then I would KNOW what I was doing to cause it and I would stop doing it.

It's like when a program freezes and you have to do a force quit to get out of it. Of course, there isn't a force quit for printing, is there?

Are there things I might be doing that might cause such a stall? If there are, if I'm doing them, I will stop.

Here are screenshots of more specs and stuff from my activity manager. I don't know why zoomit and and all the Creative Cloud stuff seems to be running. I don't have any of that open as far as I can see.

Anyway, I don't know why shutting down and starting up doesn't work every time. Is restarting better than shutting down for clearing up things that might have gotten tangled? Does restarting do something different? or is completely shutting down the best of the two choices?

Thank you again for your help,
Bantymom

 

[KeesMacPro]

As mentioned before:If it's your company's computer, then it is up to them to maintain it and keep it working properly.
Nevertheless ,reading your posts and looking at the screenshots, perhaps on a few things I could give some general recommendations ....

I assume it's an iMac ,but anyway , with Os 10.14.6 and only 8gb of RAM installed, this computer will slow down easily (spinning beachball) when there are many applications (left) open.

Is restarting better than shutting down for clearing up things that might have gotten tangled?

Both ways the Mac "cleans up" a bit and starts with more speed than when its loaded with lots of apps/activity.


-If you look at Preferences>printers , on the left side you'll see used/available printers . If you could find it which one you use, on the bottom there's button where you save it . Another way is to store it as "printer used last time".Both ways the correct printer will be used.


-I saw a lot of Google Chrome activity, and found a site that may help to solve the issue:

Stop Google Chrome Helper from eating your CPU in 2019âââthe fast way

Many Mac users have complained about Google Chrome Helper eating up their CPU memory. If your Mac is making a lot of noise and is runningâ¦

medium.com

-If you go to preferences>users>startup items, you can see all the apps that load at start up. You could remove all the apps you don't need constantly. There's no risk involved, you could even remove all of them.

-Finally when you startup the Mac and hold Command+option+P+R at the same time, and keep it pressed until it sounds again , this will clean up too.

Hope to be of some help ....