Print locally

If your print problems continue, another diagnostic technique is to print locally to the printer. Printing locally means bypassing the print queue and printing directly to the printer from the PC that’s physically attached to it.

To print locally, you must move to the PC that’s directly connected to the printer and log on to that computer. Next, open Control Panel and double-click the Printer icon. When you see the Printers dialog box, right-click the printer you’re trying to print to, and select Properties from the resulting shortcut menu. When you do, you’ll see the printer’s Properties window. Select the Details tab and make sure the printer is set to print to a local port instead of a network queue. Under normal circumstances, the Print To The Following Port field should point to an LPT or USB port rather than to a network share point.

After you’ve confirmed the print destination, select the General tab and print a test page as shown below. If the page prints, the connection is good. This means that the problem resides on the other computer or in your network configuration. If the test page fails to print, there’s a communication problem between the PC and the printer or there’s a problem with Windows  on that machine.