Printers always show not connected

[proberts8]

Hi Guys n gals, bit of a weird one and never noticed it before upgrading to Mojave. I have 2 printers of different makes 'Brother and HP Envy' but when I switch them on, it always states that the printers are not connected and the orange lightning type notification is always there. However, I can print from both!
Any ideas, it'd driving me nuts

Cheers

 

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

Hi Guys n gals, bit of a weird one and never noticed it before upgrading to Mojave. I have 2 printers of different makes 'Brother and HP Envy' but when I switch them on, it always states that the printers are not connected and the orange lightning type notification is always there. However, I can print from both!
Any ideas, it'd driving me nuts

Cheers

how are they connected? USB, Ethernet, Wireless, something else?

 

[proberts8]

Both connected via USB. Only seems to have occurred since updating OS TO Mojave. Tried updating software/drivers, resetting printing system etc. Tried everything I can think of

 

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

Both connected via USB. Only seems to have occurred since updating OS TO Mojave. Tried updating software/drivers, resetting printing system etc. Tried everything I can think of

Two things:

1 try a new USB cable

2 for the Brother, dig out the Brother Control Center. I assume that HP has something similar, but don't have any HPs on this net, just Brothers and Epsons. Verify your settings in the various control centers.

I've been using Brother printers for over 15 years now, mostly over Ethernet; I currently have two on this net, a HL-2070N and a DCP-L2540DW, both on Ethernet, both working properly. I've been using Epsons for over 20 years, and have several on this net. I used to use HPs, but pretty much stopped after HP declined to support certain printers with Leopard on Macs and Vista on Windows.

One more thing: if you have CUPS set up, have a look there. CUPS can fix a lot of strange printer things. If you don't have CUPS turned on, go to the Terminal and enter

cupsctl WebInterface=yes

and then launch a web browser and go to http://localhost:631.

 

[proberts8]

Thanks Panthera, I think CUPS has done the trick once I enabled it. I knew it wasn't a USB cable as it was the same error sign on both printers (even though they still printed), so I eliminated that. All settings in control centres ok as well. Not really sure what CUPS is or even does and wasn't even sure I could use it being connected via USB but usb came up in options (so I left that selected) and now the lightning not connected icon has disappeared from both printers and both still print as I expect. I turned the printer off and checked status and the lightning notification icon was back on (as it should be cause the printer was off), turned printer back on and lightning notification was gone.
Thankyou, it's been annoying me for months! Will keep an eye on it but so far so good, thanks again.

 

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

Thanks Panthera, I think CUPS has done the trick once I enabled it. I knew it wasn't a USB cable as it was the same error sign on both printers (even though they still printed), so I eliminated that. All settings in control centres ok as well. Not really sure what CUPS is or even does and wasn't even sure I could use it being connected via USB but usb came up in options (so I left that selected) and now the lightning not connected icon has disappeared from both printers and both still print as I expect. I turned the printer off and checked status and the lightning notification icon was back on (as it should be cause the printer was off), turned printer back on and lightning notification was gone.
Thankyou, it's been annoying me for months! Will keep an eye on it but so far so good, thanks again.

CUPS is Common UNIX Printing System, and is the basis behind all printing on Macs, and has been for quite some time. (Kind of ;like the way that XPS is behind printing on Windows, except that CUPS works.) Apple made it public a few years back, and several other UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems adopted it. Playing with CUPS often makes recalcitrant (is there any other kind?) printers work, at least for a while.

 

[RednBlue]

Helped me too. Thanks Panthera.