Windows 10 network printers offline at random (partial solution)

Hi,
For a while I've had an issue where our network printers report as offline in the Windows 10 guest, however they work fine all regular windows 10 users and work fine from my OS X host.
Work around solution:

• Open "services.msc" from the Window 10 search bar
• Find 'Print spooler', restart the service.

Jobs in the queue will then print, and the printer will be fine until the next time it stops. I've not discovered the trigger for this fault. I'm currently suspecting it's related to the Windows VM running when I've disconnected from the network then returned later. It might be OK on the days where I shutdown windows and start anew the next day, but sometimes a restart doesn't seem to solve the print issue (maybe once it's failed, it will stay failed until the spooler has restarted). Anyway, now I've a work around this is a minor annoyance rather than a show stopper. I'm sharing this in case it helps someone else.

Software versions:
Parallels Version 11.1.2 (32408)
OS X el Capitan 10.11.3 (but... this has been happening for a while, maybe before el Capitan but I can't be sure)
Windows 10 Pro 1511 build 10586.71

 

Hello Steveroot,
Please follow steps suggested at http://kb.parallels.com/4886 and let us know how it goes.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but that won't work for my needs for two reasons

Reason A) It suggests setting networking as bridged, but I prefer to have the windows network set as shared (when travelling, I need Windows to use the VPN I have on my mac and not have to create and run a second VPN account for windows. I also prefer not to have windows exposed when using public wifi).

Reason B) It suggests setting up the printer on the mac and then sharing it to the windows guest (which is for me a little confusing, as the print will then go via the mac IP address and not the windows bridged networking IP address, so I'm not sure why shared/bridged would make a difference), however I create an MS Access database that requires printers to have identical configuration/name on all machines the database is used on. Having the printer as a network printer in windows will do this, but sharing a mac printer does not.

Also, I'd not be too keen to openly share printers to the network from my mac as suggested in the KB, but I also imagine there would be ways to limit the sharing to guests if was absolutely neccessary.

If there is a fix I'd welcome it, but as I've said restarting the windows print spooler lets me get back to work. I posted here just in case others were looking for solutions to similar problems.

 

Thanks for the pointer to the update. I'll give it a go and report anything of interest

 

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