Problems and Solutions for Installing Wireless Networking for a Canon Pixma MX860 Printer – “Printer is Offline”

This is a solution that I found necessary while installing and configuring wireless networking with my new Canon Pixma MX860 printer.
It should be noted that this printer gets rave reviews, except for its wireless setup instructions. I guess I should be happy to know that I am not alone in my struggles. I concur with the rest though – in my limited experience with it I have found it to be a good appliance. The build quality is especially good.
What I have:

• Windows XP SP3
• Canon Pixma MX860 (purchased July 25, 2009) for something like $160 at Best Buy
• A WIFI hub with WPA2 enabled

What I did right:

• Unloaded the machine from the box, removed all the red tape, installed the cartridges
• Ran through the print head alignment sequence
• Inserted the DVD into my DVD drive
• Chose Easy Install

What I did wrong that probably caused my problem:

• When I got to the screen asking the following, I goofed:
  • 1) Use the printer via USB
  • 2) Use the printer on network
• I made the wrong choice: I picked USB (option 1)  because I had seen other reviews talking about how you should use USB to configure your printer for wireless.
• Instead, you should pick (2) if you plan to use the printer via wireless network, even though you will be using USB to configure the printer. Duh.

I got through the instructions, but couldn’t print documents with the USB cable unplugged. It said the printer was offline.
Final Solution:
My problem was caused by a Windows configuration problem.

• Opened Start Menu –> Printers and Faxes
• Saw the MX860 Printer and MX860 Fax entries in list
• Noted that they were both listed as offline.
• Right clicked on Printer entry, noticed “Use Printer Online” was a menu option, clicked on it
• Voila, printer now shown as online.
• In Notepad, now able to print a document.

Troubleshooting Notes
Just in case this is helpful to anyone else mired in troubleshooting, here are my notes on things I did to figure this out.

Troubleshooting, first idea:

• I launched the Canon IJ Network Tool from the Start Menu with the USB cable plugged in to my computer.
• My printer showed up, so I clicked on it and then Configuration…
• I had to manually configure my wireless
  • Make sure Use WLAN is checked
  • Make sure your SSID is set to your wireless router
  • Encryption is probably WPA2. So choose that. Then click Configuration… for it.
  • If you have a 10 character password, choose 64bit and Hex. Leave ID to 1, and Auth to Auto.
  • Set an Admin password on the second tab if you so desire.
• Click OK, and it should upload those settings to the printer.
• Go to your printer and make sure the settings stuck.
  • Click the Menu button
  • Right arrow key twice (to Settings), OK
  • Right arrow once (to Device Settings), OK
  • Down arrow to LAN Settings, OK
  • Down arrow to WLAN settings list, OK
  • Up arrow until you see your printer IP address
    • Like 192.168.0.83
• Open a DOS prompt on your computer
• ping <your printer ip address>
  • You should be able to get to it from your computer
• But what then? If you unplug the USB cable, I would see that the printer is offline.
• Fail (perhaps, see final solution below, might have been able to fix this)

Troubleshooting, second idea:

• Being the good computer engineer, I uninstalled all the Canon stuff and started over
• This time I picked the right connection choice
• I didn’t need to reconfigure the printer, so I was able to choose “Printer already connected to the network” when it came to that.
• Choose a mapped drive letter for the printer, I left it at Z which is the default.
• Everything seemed to go well, and finished the install.
• Still no joy on printing. The printer was still listed as offline.
• Fail

Hope this helps some other struggling souls out there. Add a comment if so.

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