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Brother MFC-L3770 "printer driver unavailable"

Anonymous
2021-01-09T11:47:37+00:00

Hi,

My Brother L3770 has not been working for a week, after it was previously working fine.

The printer itself is not the issue, as printing from other PCs and laptops is ok, but my main Windows 10 PC doe not allow printing.

I have uninstalled and re-installed all Brother driver and software a number of times, but the issue remains the same.

It appears that there is no printer driver (anymore) for this model that is recognized by Windows10, although this is a standard printer.

I spoke to Brother who probably correctly claim that the printer is fine and they also checked the driver + software on their website. I also got to chat with the MSFT Windows support team, who could not figure it out either. We ended up doing a Windows 10 re-install, but the issue is still the same.

I have read that people have had similar issues after Windows updates in the past. So I went into updates and uninstall recent ones that could still be removed, but those were probably installed already after the printing issue came up. In any event, it did not resolve the issue.

Any ideas as to what I can do?

Tx.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-01-10T03:37:16+00:00

    Your port settings are likely an issue or you have another network-related issue. The printer should have an IP address. If you have it set to auto, you might consider setting it to a static rather than relying on the Brother software to auto sense the printer. Even if you do not do this, you should be able to ping its current address which should be available from the printer's console. If you cannot do this you will need to look into your network/firewall connectivity issue. If you can do this then you know the problem computer can communicate over the network to it. Try creating a new network port carrying the current IP address (why I recommend a static so it does not change) and running through the wizard to manually create a new printer instance using the second method.

    Image

    If the address is 192.168.1.50.

    Image

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-01-30T23:47:22+00:00

    doesn;t work for me

    I just had same issue on a MFC-L8900CDW

    There is something very strange going on with brother printer drivers.

    It won't work if I use the vendor printer package.

    It won't work if i use the network printer installation wizard.

    It won't work if i use windows settings

    all 3 result in a printer showing up with 'driver is unavailable'

    The network printer wizard finds the printer but hangs with 'windows could not communicate with the WSD printer please check the pinter is online & connected to the network.

    thing is my other PC with identical windows insider build works perfectly, different is on the working PC it was found with mDNS not SSDP.

    my guess is actually a firmware issue with the printer relative to WSD - ****

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-01-10T12:02:33+00:00

    Dear Techfreak_

    I have followed these steps and it works indeed !!!

    Bizarrely I had tried the "connect via IP address" option before, including with the Brother Helpdesk, but had chosen a different device type option (automatic). That did not work.

    I hope I now get more stable functionality of the printer.

    So, thank you very much indeed for your help!

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-01-09T13:31:40+00:00

    In regards to the Windows Update method, the driver for that model is not downloaded on my machine. However, a MFC-L3730 driver does come up that should be compatible.

    In regards to the exact drivers, what happens when you download the printer only drivers [brother.com] using the method you described? Have you tried using have disk pointing to the extracted gdi folder? It comes up for me.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-01-09T12:59:25+00:00

    To add and clarify:

    If I go via WIN+r and "printui /s /t2" into Print Server Properties and the "Drivers" tab, I can select "Add..." there.

    In the Add Printer Driver Wizard that comes up there are no Brother printers listed. When I press "Windows Update" it takes a few minutes and then I get a much longer list of printer manufactures and many models, but my model Brother MFC-L3770CDW is still strangely omitted from that list, so I can't select a driver for it.

    When I do the exact same from my laptop that runs on Windows 10 2004 (instead of my PC on Windows 10 20H2) already the automatic menu shows my printer model as an option. And logically from that laptop I can print without issues.

    I really need to get this fixed on the PC, so any help is greatly appreciated.

    Thanks.

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