Q: Time Capsule & Brother MFC-2700LD printer "printing looking for printer" message

The issue is a bit more complex..

Yosemite is the great network dog.. and with each patch it seems to become doggier .. like you need a kennel for increasingly large dogs.

It is important to know the TC configuration in the network.

Is it bridged or main router?

Is the computer still able to find the TC in airport utility when the printer has faded away?

And even more important.. is the printer plugged in by USB.. or using ethernet or wireless?? They are entirely different setups.

hmmm.. you have a fairly complex setup.

I am most concerned that the express is wrongly setup..

I need you to give me the screenshots of the setup from the Mac.

I want to see the summary pages.. so I can see what is going on.

This page is short summary.. below is the full summary for the units.

To do the full summary, hold down option key and double click the icon for each unit. All units can then be active at the same time.

Just to say none of this is going to compromise your network.. so here is my info.. please don't blank out everything.. as some people are concerned.. that is of no use to me. And none of this is of any use to anybody anywhere.

It is really important that the Express is NOT in Extend wireless.. and plugged in by ethernet.. Please go back to the setup of the express.. or for now pull it out of the network.. until we can get things working.. You will definitely cause issues otherwise.

You have put your text in as a picture.. and that makes life hard for me to quote you.

1. I cannot click the link.. It is a picture.

But after equal number of years on the darkside.. (DOS 3.1, windows 1) which is now light grey btw.. and the Apple side is a much darker shade.. !!

I agree.. I don't think you need to go around deleting files.

You probably do need to delete the printer and start over.

But even that is perhaps not the issue.

2. You Mac should not have both wireless and ethernet at the same time.. pick one or the other.. actually I want you to try wireless to the TC.. if the printer is connected by wireless to the TC as well it is helpful to have both together.

3. Find the printer IP address and ping it.

When I say that.. tell me if it needs further explanation..

4. I am really going to upset you now.. I want you to reset the TC to factory and start over.. Mucho Apologies.. but this is necessary.. it will mess up a few things.. Time Machine being the main one.

5. You are going to need to do some hard and frustrating work.. don't get mad and don't lose patience.. it can take a long time .. what I will suggest are basic network setup which are best practice.. You will need a network running best practice so we can get to the bottom of this.. Yosemite allows no mistakes.

I will post what the setup is for TC in next post..

Once you finish all of that you will need to redo the printer connection to the TC.. and then redo the printer setup in the Mac.. just delete the existing setup and start over.. often a full reboot of the network is required between any of these major changes.

These are my standard.. get a TC working with Yosemite.

Start from a factory reset. No files are lost on the hard disk doing this.

Factory reset universal

Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord or power off at the wall.. wait 10sec.. hold in the reset button.. be gentle.. power on again still holding in reset.. and keep holding it in for another 10sec. You may need some help as it is hard to both hold in reset and apply power. It will show success by rapidly blinking the front led. Release the reset.. and wait a couple of min for the TC to reset and come back with factory settings. If the front LED doesn’t blink rapidly you missed it and simply try again. The reset is fairly fragile in these.. press it so you feel it just click and no more.. I have seen people bend the lever or even break it. I use a toothpick as tool.

N.B. None of your files on the hard disk of the TC are deleted.. this simply clears out the router settings of the TC.

Setup the TC again.

Then redo the setup from the computer with Yosemite.

1. Use very short names.. NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED names. No spaces and pure alphanumerics.

eg TCgen5 for basestation and TCwifi wireless name.

If the issue is wireless use TC24ghz and TC5ghz with fixed channels as this also seems to help stop the nonsense. But this can be tried in the second round. ie plan on a first and second round of changes to fix this.. hopefully.. I will point out other steps that can be round2.

2. Use all passwords that also comply with 1. but can be a bit longer. ie 8-20 characters mixed case and numbers.. no non-alphanumerics.

3. If the TC is main router you can skip this point. This is only an issue when the TC is bridged. In your case it should be.

Ensure the TC always takes the same IP address.. you will need to do this on the main router using dhcp reservation.. or a bit more complex setup using static IP in the TC. But this is important.. having IP drift all over the place when Yosemite cannot remember its own name for 5 min after a reboot makes for poor networking.

You can try without this.. and if you need to go around again.. then try this. Instead of bridge use this setup.. static IP.. it is a bit complicated but gives better results. If you have issues with this give me details of where you find it hard.

Re: airport time capsule keeps disconnecting

4. Check your share name on the computer is not changing.. make sure it also complies with the above.. short no spaces and pure alphanumeric.. but this change will mess up your TM backup.. so be prepared to do a new full backup. Sorry.. keep this one for second round if you want to avoid a new backup.

5. Mount the TC disk in the computer manually.

In Finder, Go, Connect to server from the top menu,

Type in SMB://192.168.0.254 (or whatever the TC ip is which you have now made static. As a router by default it is 10.0.1.1 and I encourage people to stick with that unless you know what you are doing).

You can use name.. SMB://TCgen5.local where you replace TCgen5 with your TC name.. local is the default domain of the TC and doesn't change.

However names are not so easy as IP address.. nor as reliable. At least not in Yosemite they aren't. The domain can also be an issue if you are not plugged or wireless directly to the TC.

6. Make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only in the computer. For example wireless open the network preferences, wireless and advanced / TCP/IP.. and fix the IPv6. to link-local only. Do the same for ethernet if you use it.

There is a lot more jiggery pokery you can try but the above is a good start.. if you find it still unreliable.. don't be surprised.

You might need to do some more work on the computer itself. eg Reset the NVRAM and SMC (just google them).. has helped some people. Clean install of the OS is also helpful if you upgrade installed.

Tell us how you go.

I am in Australia and our time zones makes replies.. separated by 12 hours.. I will follow up all replies but be patient.. it can take me a while to get there.

Good stuff..

In my setup instructions.. which I know you haven't had time to do yet.. I implore people to use NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED NAMES..

Yours is a good case. The & is illegal.

See http://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/web/cms/characters-avoid/

And your TC name breaks the length rule as well as using apostrophe.

Both will have serious effects on network with printer which is designed after all for windows.. and windows is much tighter .. as well as Apple now use SMB network protocol by default.

Start getting the names cleaned up and some good things might start to flow from it.