Problem with laptop accessing a printer

My wife's laptop - a Dell of some sort - has trouble accessing our printer. If the printer is off when she boots up it shows as offline and stays that way until she reboots (with the printer on). Our other computers - 2 homegrown desktop PCs and a Framework laptop - do not have this problem. When the printer is powered the computers can print to it with no intervention needed.

Is there some option set wrong on my wife's laptop? If not, is there something quicker than rebooting the laptop to make Windows aware of the printer? (Obviously powering the printer off and on will not work. The problem seems to be that Windows on the Dell doesn't see the printer coming on.

By the way, the 2 laptops are connected by wifi; the 2 PC are connected by Ethernet.

How is this printer connected to the others? Is it connected via USB to another computer and shared, or is it connected to the network? How is the printer installed on the computer? Did you add it by specifying the IP address for the printer, having windows scan the network for it, or was it installed using the manufacturer's software?

My first step would be to uninstall the printer from the computer and reinstall it using software downloaded from the printer manufacturers website.

ArazelEternal said:

Is it connected via USB to another computer and shared, or is it connected to the network?

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pokeefe0001 said:

By the way, the 2 laptops are connected by wifi

Click to expand...

Reinstall the printer software, if you haven't tried. Or are you relying on the Windows driver?

Thanks for the suggestions. The printer is Ethernet-connected to my router. Its an old HP printer with installation software that scans the LAN to find an appropriate target printer. i'll try reinstalling the printer software.