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User profile for user: carpan
carpan Author
User level: Level 1
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Brother HL2170W printer driver not connecting with preferences, printers, add a printer. OS El Captain 10.11.3

My Brother HL2170W printer suddenly stopped working as my mac wasn't connecting to it - one day perfect and then next not. I deleted it and reinstalled the driver, but El Captain doesn't see the printer, When I click printers and add a printer nothing is there. I've tried to reboot and reload driver, nothing works. At first the message was this printer is not connected, I tried to wake that up with multiple uplugging and plugging and reboots and finally deleted the printer. Then the reinstall didn't work and I am totally stuck. How do I get this printer to be visible and connected?

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Feb 4, 2016 12:49 PM

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User profile for user: PAHU
PAHU
User level: Level 6
16,705 points

Posted on Feb 5, 2016 6:39 PM

The display of a networked printer in the Add printer window relies on the Bonjour protocol. For a printer not to be shown then this would indicate an issue with the Bonjour service. A suitable workaround is to create a printer using the IP address of the printer. This requires that you learn the IPv4 address the printer is using which can often be found by printing a network configuration page via the printers control panel. Once you have this information you can select to add a printer and with the Default view displayed, click the IP icon. You can then enter the IPv4 address and set the Protocol to HP Jetdirect-Socket. You can leave the Queue field blank and change the Name from the IPv4 address to something meaningful, such as Brother HL2170W. The last step is to select the supporting Brother HL2170W PPD via the Use menu. With this information set you can press the Add printer to complete the printer creation and then print a document to test.

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User profile for user: PAHU
PAHU
User level: Level 6
16,705 points

Feb 5, 2016 6:39 PM in response to carpan

The display of a networked printer in the Add printer window relies on the Bonjour protocol. For a printer not to be shown then this would indicate an issue with the Bonjour service. A suitable workaround is to create a printer using the IP address of the printer. This requires that you learn the IPv4 address the printer is using which can often be found by printing a network configuration page via the printers control panel. Once you have this information you can select to add a printer and with the Default view displayed, click the IP icon. You can then enter the IPv4 address and set the Protocol to HP Jetdirect-Socket. You can leave the Queue field blank and change the Name from the IPv4 address to something meaningful, such as Brother HL2170W. The last step is to select the supporting Brother HL2170W PPD via the Use menu. With this information set you can press the Add printer to complete the printer creation and then print a document to test.

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Brother HL2170W printer driver not connecting with preferences, printers, add a printer. OS El Captain 10.11.3

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