Printer problems: Synology DiskStation, Windows 8.1 and Canon iX5000

Canon Printer No Ports

Why are the ports all greyed out?

For some time my Synology DiskStation NAS  DS210j, Windows 8.1 and Canon Pixma iX5000 have been living in harmony. Today this ended.

The printer connects to a USB port on the NAS and the PC prints via the local network to the printer.

No matter what I reinstalled and updated I could not get the test page to print from my PC to the printer. I did achieve the following:

  • Printed a test page from the DiskStation Control Panel
  • Used the Synology Assistant on my PC to install the printer. Which it did but it didn’t work.
  • Manually installed the printer and ports but it didn’t work
  • Removed all the printers which had worked.
  • Tried the above again.

It still didn’t work with the message “Printer Error” in the PC’s printer queue.

After several hours of intermittent attempts to get it working and decided to test the printer from an old XP PC. It worked first time with a print device which had been set up for some time.

I returned to the Windows 8.1 PC and deleted all my previous attempts and started a fresh install of a new printer.  It immediately spotted the network printer, set up quickly, the test page printed and the three pages I had been trying to print all day!

Now what is really weird is the working printer doesn’t use any port!

Any thoughts on this matter will be gratefully received.

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