Brother HL-2170W

Thank you SO much for this tip.

I originally had Brother tech support help me set up wireless and it took forever with them on the phone. I recently reconfigured my Airport Express and lost the wireless connection with the printer.

I was looking for an easy way to get it connected again and the PIN method is it!!!

I did have trouble getting the PIN to print out initially, but after I reset the printer it worked fine and made sure my connection was Active as detailed in teral's post above.

I found that pressing the reset for a few seconds and then taking out the clip worked for me rather than pressing on the reset until the yellow light came on.

The other "tricky" thing as others have pointed out is that you find the option for adding "other wireless clients" under the main menu "Base Station" for Airport Utility NOT in the dialogue box.

Here are instructions on how to reset the printer settings to default if anyone needs that.

How do I factory reset the print server?

Description:

If you wish to reset the print server back to its default factory settings (resetting all information such as the password and IP address information), please follow these steps:

1. Turn off the printer.
2. Make sure that the front cover is closed and the power cord is plugged in.
3. Hold down the Go button as you turn on the power switch. Keep the Go button pressed down until the Toner, Drum and Error LEDs light up. Release the Go button. Make sure that theToner, Drum and Error LEDs are off.
4. Press the Go button seven times. Make sure that all the LEDs light up to indicate the print server has been reset to its default factory setting.

I have a Brother 2170W and I can print over USB just fine with the drivers that came on disk with Snow Leopard. Try to make sure the printer is turned on and connected correctly.

Does it show up in the System Profiler (Apple menu -> About This Mac -> "More Info" button)?

Under the USB section of the System Profile, if you don't see the device then there is something wrong with your USB connection or the printer isn't functioning correctly.

I have a Brother MFC-9840CDW that runs on my wireless network. On both my macs, the Brother Console disappeared after the update. I reloaded the brother software from the original disk and restarted, the console came back. I then updated to the latest Brother software and everything is back to normal.

i'm having same problem. i upgraded to snow leopard and wireless 2170w printer isn't working. i also experience a few things running my cpu up to 90%. cupsd, and rastertobrother processes. any help would be great!

Good luck Butterbuns,

I've got the same printer but I'm sitting on my 10.6 disk. I'm too cowardly to upgrade until it looks like the bugs have been worked out. So I'll be monitoring this post as I'd really like my printer to work wirelessly.

Checking the Brother website I did find this: http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public/us/us/en/dlf/dlf/000000/003900/d lf003972.html?reg=us&c=us&lang=en&prod=hl2170w_all&type2=1&os=94&flang=4&dlid=dl f003972

It's the latest CUPS driver for the HL-2170 released 9/10/09. But I don't actually know what a CUPS driver is 🙂. Point is though that it is for 10.6 and for our printer.

Good luck,

Bear

For what it's worth, I have two Brother HL-2170W printers in two locations, from which I print with one MacBook Pro. In both instances, the printer is connected by Ethernet to an Airport Time Capsule so I'm accessing the printer wirelessly (but not using the printer's native wireless capability). Lately I've noticed the inconsistent behavior noted in this thread - can't print when selected or printer doesn't show up when trying to re-add it via System Preferences. Following a tip provided by a previous poster, I read the Snow Leopard driver instructions from Brother and tried unplugging the printer from both power and Time Capsule, then plugging them both back in. Viola! I'm able to print again. I have not installed Snow Leopard yet, though.

Hi there,
working on 10.6 and lost all printing possibilities (neither wireless nor network).
Downloaded the drivers from the brother site but still doesn't work. That's a real shame- since I'm quite new to Mac: can we expect any OS-X updates fixing this issue or do I have to browse around and find the solution......?

Butterbuns,

I wish I could help you. All I can now do is report on my success. I had sat on my disk of Snow Kitty waiting to see if any more bugs could be worked out. Well last night I took the plunge. And the ONLY problem I had was that my default printer became my DYMO (label printer) instead of my Brother HL-2170W and I didn't notice at first.

So on the first test print, I clicked print and waited for the Brother to spool up . . . then my DYMO came to life and out came to labels with just a few words on them printed sideways 🙂

Well it's pretty easy to reset Default to my Brother.

I don't know why you (or anyone else) is having problems.

I am printing via the wifi, and I did NOT update the driver from the brother site. I did note that after the upgrade I gave permission for software update to do it's thing. And I noticed the sign go by, "updating brother driver", so I suppose the updater did it for me. Don't know for sure.

Good luck,

Bear

I have the same rastertobrother problem. Occurred when the printer could not be found; seems as through rastertobrother never gives up. Admirable, I suppose. You can kill of the process by deleting the print job.

I was able to resolve this issue in Snow Leopard 6.0.1 by doing the following:

1. Download the latest driver from Brother.
2. Reset the network settings on the printer by switching off, holding 'Go', powering on, and pressing go 7 times.
3. Connect via adhoc to printer, SSID 'SETUP'.
4. Add it as a new printer.
5. Go into Printer Settings, connect via Web Portal.
6. Reconfigure TCP/IP settings (these can be left blank for DHCP).
7. Configure Wireless to connect to your router (enter its SSID and encryption settings, if any.)
8. Printer will re-establish a connection to the router if everything has been setup ok.
9. Return to printer settings panel and print a test page.

This worked for me, but whether it is certainly a Snow Leopard issue or mere coincidence, I am uncertain.

I have the same problem with the 2170 printer. It only prints wirelessly when connected to a wireless router. It will not print wirelessly directly from my computer. Tries the solutions posted here, but to no avail and looking at the not answered notice at the top of this forum section, it doesn't appear that there is yet a solution.

I'm don't know what to tell ya. But I can only say that I am connecting wirelessly to my 2170 printer. It's not plugged into I router either. Nor have I had any problems with it since I upgraded.

Was your printer working before your upgrade? I suppose I'm assuming that you just upgraded as opposed to either a new mac or a new printer. I ask because I wonder if you have a problem with installation or setup of the printer. It's been awhile since I first installed it, but I do recall it being a little tricky at first.

Good luck,

Bear

After about 10 hours (light estimate) and about a quarter-ream of paper printing out reset pages and network status pages I finally got it this thing working wirelessly.

This is my first mac so forgive me if these things sound rudimentary, anyway here goes…

And FYI, mine is a new 21.5 imac out of the box with Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

Before you start:
a) Throw away the CD that came with the printer.
b) Reset the printer to factory defaults (turn on, hold GO, then release and press 7-10 times)
c) Create your internal Airport home network (I used a WEP 128-bit security setting with a 13 character password). Confirm password, case, special characters, whatever before you begin. I’ll say this again: confirm that your password as you know it is really as you know it.
d) Turn off your firewall
e) Go to the brother site and download the BRAdminLight_120.dmg utility. I didn't need the printer driver.

Then here you go:
a) Run the bradminlight.dmg program, so that you get the utility up and running.
b) Plug an Ethernet cable into your printer and run the other end into your Ethernet jack on the back of the mac. (Presumably this would work with USB too, but I lost the cable some time ago)
c) Press the GO button on the printer (for some reason this helps queue up the Ethernet jack on the printer).
d) Click on the “Search” button on the bradminlight utility (sometimes it can take about a minute for the printer to properly communicate with the mac/if it doesn’t communicate after about two minutes turn off the printer and start again with c) above)
e) Once the printer shows up in the bradminlight utility click on the fourth button of the utility that brings you to the printers homepage.
f) Click on “configure wireless”. From here on out be careful, I think I inadvertently hit a spacebar once in a box I shouldn’t have and this set me back about 10 resets.
g) Set communication mode: Ad Hoc (this is was the missing piece for me, all other attempts were using the infrastructure mode, but this doesn't work with the Airport card I guess)
h) Search for your Airport network name or add it manually (my search worked fine)
i) Set Channel: “11”
j) Set Authentication method: “Open System”
k) Set Encryption: “WEP”
l) Set WEP Key 1: [type your Airport network password]
m) Click Submit

From here the utility asks whether you want to establish a wireless connection. Remove the Ethernet cable from the back of the mac. If you hear the printer start to hum less than 10 seconds later, you’re good to go. If it takes longer, you’ll get the dreaded “failed to establish connection” sheet after about 30 seconds to a minute.

When you go to System Preferences → Print & Fax → Add Printer, you should see this printer with the CUPS driver ready to add.

Good luck.

I am not getting BRAdmin Light to recognize the device. It "searches" for a second and then I stare at it for a minute and 2 and then turn it off, hold GO, push GO 7 times, hit GO, hit Search....

Thoughts?

I have it working in snow leopard but every time I want to print I have to manually turn AIrport (on the imac) off and then ack on. The computer finds the printer every time if I do this but loses it only a minute or two later after the print job.