For those having trouble wirelessly printing to their
Samsung SCX-4500W printer from a Windows computer, I have this "easy" 13-step process that
usually fixes my most common printing problem:
The symptom:You haven't used your printer in a couple of days and have just hit the print button in an application you wish to print a document from. Instead of your printed document gracefully emerging from your printer, a Samsung status window appears on your computer above the task tray, cryptically announcing
"The current printer port is not supported for the current printer status". You scratch your head in complete confusion.
The solution:
- Go into the room where your printer is. Observe that it has dropped its
wifi connection and not reconnected automatically - the blue light
indicating wifi is no longer illuminated.
- Turn off the printer, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on.
- Rebooting always causes a blank page to be ejected - how annoying! Open up the tray and reinsert the blank sheet.
- Wait for the blue wifi light to come on.
- Return to your computer and open the printer job queue window. Locate your document in this window with "Error" status next to it: right-click on it and select restart so its status changes to "Printing".
- After a while, notice the status has changed to "Error - Printing" or "Error - Sent to printer".
Since restarting the job was not successful, right-click and select
cancel. Press the OK button in the confirmation dialog. You may have to
do this a second time before the job clears.
- Return to the application you printed from and re-print the document.
- Double-click on the blue Samsung "S" icon in the task tray. A window titled Samsung SX-4500W Series will appear in the lower right. Observe the status first says "Please wait..." then show the same cryptic message "The current printer port is not supported for the printer status". Grrrr.
- Check if your computer really can access the printer by opening web
browser and typing its ip address. For me, it is 192.168.1.70.
Alternatively, click the "Printer Setting" button in the window of step
8. Observe that the printer reports it is alive and ready for action.
This is good.
- Check if any other Samsung software is able to use the printer: Open SmarThru 4 software, select "Scan To", "Folder", then hit "Scan" button. Observe that scanning from the printer works absolutely fine. Close SmarThru. So the problem is just the crappy printer driver.
- Close any Samsung windows you have open. Navigate the start menu to Samsung SCX-4500W Series->Maintenance.
The installer will run in maintenance mode and find your printer on
the network (and show its ip address), as well as an option to use it on
"Local Port". Select the printer on network and click Next. Select "Samsung SCX-4500W Series printer driver" to repair and hit Next. The driver will re-install. Click Finish when done.
- Return to your application you wish to print from and activate the printing of the document again.
- The Samsung status window will once again appear in the lower right proclaiming "The current printer port is not supported for the printer status".
Ignore this stupid message and close the window. Go to the room with
your printer and with any luck, you will find your printed document
waiting for you!
Once you are well practiced at this, and can fully appreciate how
useless Samsung's software developers are, you can just do steps 1,2,3,4, 5, 6,11,12, and 13.
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