Solved Brother MFC-J1010DW has stopped working

current windows version: Windows 11 Home, 24H2 Build 26100.7922
Brother MFC-J1010DW connected via USB

There was a sequence of events that began with my printer printing two copies of every print job. The print window was set to one copy. I tried several suggested cures to no avail. So---I went to device manager, chose uninstall, and restarted my computer. (This an operation I have used countless times without issues.) Upon restart, I could not print anything. I Googled solutions which sent me to the Brother printer website.
The recommendation was to uinstall/reinstall the drivers. I followed the instructions carefully to ensure that I did not do anything wrong. The result was a new printer named "Brother MFC-J1010DWcopy. The original name is no longer shown under default printers. Nothing will print via windows print dialog window. The only way I can print anything is by using printQueueCleaner. Printing a test page via printQueueCleaner works flawlessly.
I would greatly appreciate any helpful replies.

reagards,
caffeine

EDIT: As an afterthought I copied a document directly from the printer successfully.

I don't have any suggestions, but I found my 16 year old Brother HL-5370DW disappeared from Windows 11 a couple weeks ago. I had to add it back as a new printer using drivers built into Windows, and it was fine thereafter.

Start by using the brother uninstall tool for your printer on win 11 below and take it from there:

Utilities | Downloads | MFC-J1010DW | United States | Brother

If I where you I would use only the latest drivers from brother and stop windows from updating them. Look in the tutorials here on how to prevent microsoft driver updates in win 11

let us know how it's going.

Uninstall all Brother desktop software from this list:
Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features.

Go to Settings>Bluetooth & Devices>Printer& Scanners
If any Brother Printer Devices (including scanners) appear in this list, remove them.

On same page find and go to More Devices and Printer Settings to get this screen:


If your Brother printer is still here, right-click, choose "See what's printing" and if any print jobs are in this queue, right-click and cancel them. Once clear, right-click and choose Remove Device.

Now disconnect USB data cable and reboot computer.

While computer restarts go into the printer's onboard menu and find Default Settings or Factory reset. Do that.

Do not connect printer to computer yet.

When printer comes back up, try a regular copy using the printer and it's controls only.

If successful, now install to computer using Brother software at: Downloads | MFC-J1010DW | United States | Brother

Choose Full Software Package. Don't connect the USB data cable until the installer tells you to. This way, the software installs the prnter instead of Windows trying to install it on its own.

Brother likes to update its software and firmware after installing and I recommend doing this. iPrint & Scan also. Once you get the software and firmwre components updated, turn off auto-checking for updates. iPrint & Scan has a switch for this in its settings and Brother Utilities also has an option to not check for updates.

This should get you straight. Unless you must have color, your next printer should be a black and white laser. My current recommendation is the DCP-L2640DW. About $220 on Amazon. Your printing life will be much more simpler with a laser printer.

Like you I have "extra" copies of my printer on my desktop. Here's my story.

I have a Brother MFC-465CN Printer that has been unsupported by Brother for a few years (probably more). And I have had a horrible time reinstalling it whenever I have had a need to, like when doing a clean install. This printer works great and it makes no sense to sped money on a new one when it works so well for my needs. But if I have to reinstall it on my several laptops it is next to impossible. I try everything I can think of to get it installed ( the laptops don't have a DVD drive) but I do still have the CD that came with the printer and I just burn the CD contents to a CD-R and make it bootable. Still it is painful to get it recognized on my local network. Until such time as whatever I do becomes successful, which is a procedure that is non-repeatable. Now I do, like you, have a copy of the printer on my machines. It seems Windows will keep a copy in the Registry even when the printer has been uninstalled. See my screen shots below. If there was a way to remove these copies I would do it but I'm afraid that if I do somehow the devise might become inaccessible, so I leave my copies alone. So you too can search your registry and find where the copy of your printer is located, at least you'll know where the name is coming from.

caffeine said:

The result was a new printer named "Brother MFC-J1010DWcopy

Click to expand...

Uninstall everything Brother (Use Revo or the Brother uninstall tool if you have to)
Clear any Brother printers in the list.
Turn off the printer
Reboot
Turn on the Printer
Run the last available software for your exact Brother. Use the “Easy Setup” or the “Full Software Package”


Last week, the Brother printers (Brother MFC-L2880DW / Brother HL2270DW) vanished from my Sons PC. It was very testing.

sgayres: SUCCESS! Thanks for your help. I'm going to address specific areas of your post with my own insight on what I learned from you during this process. First I apologize for not using the quote feature of this forum. I have trouble managing the locations where quotes appear within the other text.

You said
"Uninstall all Brother desktop software from this list:
Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features." -- nothing to remove.
You said
"Go to Settings>Bluetooth & Devices>Printer& Scanners
If any Brother Printer Devices (including scanners) appear in this list, remove them. I had not thought of doing this. It worked perfectly.
You said
"If your Brother printer is still here, right-click, choose "See what's printing" and if any print jobs are in this queue, right-click and cancel them. Once clear, right-click and choose Remove Device." My printer was not shown.
You said
"While computer restarts go into the printer's onboard menu and find Default Settings or Factory reset." Do that. I did that and configured date and time.
You said
"When printer comes back up, try a regular copy using the printer and it's controls only." Manual copy from the printer worked fine.

Installation worked perfectly. You said
"Once you get the software and firmware components updated, turn off auto-checking for updates. iPrint & Scan has a switch for this in its settings and Brother Utilities also has an option to not check for updates." I did this as well as preventing windows update from installing driver updates.

As an aside, I spend 10-20 hours per month tutoring people on various Windows topics. One common topic is disabling automatic check for updates. These automatic features can be a resource hogs, especially if they run at startup. If they wish to update programs (apps) do so from the developer's website or a trusted mirror.

Thanks so much for your instruction set.

regards,
caffeine

Good to hear you got your printer back. Printer troubleshooting can be a pain. I struggled with it when I started doing computer repair full time. That was a series of steps I evolved doing regardless of manufacturer and it usually works.

You may find that if you open the iPrint & Scan utility that you have to manually "set the device" to your USB printer. It can take a few minutes to set.

You may also see something that says "Refresh". Pretend that isn't there. It's Brother's ink subscription program which I warn against signing up for.

Those two update switches in the Brother software only stop the Brother update system from checking for updates. Generally, updates offered from Brother are safe but I turn those off for customers after I catch the "new" software up with updates so that the customer isn't later faced with answering update questions and maybe something going wrong. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Windows can still offer hardware updates but with printers, they will not force-install on Windows 11 systems. Printer-related updates offered by Microosoft will be in the Drivers section of Windows updates and with those, I let them sit there for eternity if everything with the printer is working ok. Again - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sometimes we used to have to turn off Windows hardware updates in previous systems. This setting was in the System Properties - Advanced System Settings, Hardware tab and Device Installations Settings. We did this with hardware like legacy printers or USB wifi adapters to keep Windows from ruining our work where we had to locate legacy drivers to get hardware to function. I haven't had to do that with any Win11 systems.

Thank all of you who have contributed to this thread. I am preparing to mark this as solved.