No luck adding network-shared printer (Brother HL-2240)

S

shura

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Posts
100
Hi all,

There is a very annoying issue after I was dumb enough to install Windows 11 Pro on my new build.

I have a Brother HL-2240 printer hooked up to my NAS and available on the network. The three Win10 machines I have here discover it right away and everything works just fine. The Win11 box however refuses to see it when I try to add it automatically or manually entering through the "shared printer by name" option. I know the network location is correct and pretty sure that all the necessary services are running and the file & printer sharing option is ticked for my network. I did install the drivers and the correct model is available to select when trying the bottom option "add a local printer or a network printer with manual settings," but with that one I am clueless which port would be correct here. The properties of this printer in my Win10 machines have it located at the root print queue.

Kind of lost here. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I think this is for printers with built-in networking, mine is not even listed as a related model. What I have is a basic USB printer hooked up to a Synology NAS, which shares it on the network.
 
It's a Synology DiskStation DS112j, which has been working pretty much flawlessly for a decade.
 
Just a quick update that may be useful to others: the complete error message I was receiving had nothing to do with Windows 11 (although it is terrible nevertheless), because I had Win10 machines on the same network unable to add the printer with the same message containing: "No more connections can be made to this remote computer." The issue only affected computers that did not have the printer added a while back, i.e., those that already had it installed could print a test page.

Anyway, the problem seems to be some silliness on the server side. One solution is to enable SMB1 on the NAS side. I am guessing that it either removes the limit on the number of connections, or clears some sort of cache when it restarts the file service for SMB1 to get enabled. For a Synology DSM, it is in Control Panel > File Services > Advanced Settings. SMB1 will need to be enabled on the client ("turn windows features on or off" in Windows).

I think this could be marked as solved.
 
Also, I found this. Compatibility List | Synology Inc.

"Support for USB Printers has been deprecated on both DSM and SRM platforms.
This compatibility list is provided as-is and without any technical support. Deprecated functionality may be removed or cease to work at any time."

Synology would not suggest enabling SMB1 as it opens security vulnerabilities. I would not suggest it either. That being said, it is your computer and if you are comfortable with it, so be it.

I'm not going to mark it solved, as in my view, opening up security vulnerabilities is not a solution.


Let us know if you have further issues.
 
You're right, especially given that I print once a year... This was not a good solution, so I disabled SMB1 both in Windows and on my NAS. Unfortunately, something more serious started happening (maybe unrelated), posted as a separate thread here.
 

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