Help, network question

Please help!!!

We have a local network in our office - two desktops with xp, password protected and a lexmark network printer running on ms network software. Yesterday I brought in my laptop, unplugged one of the desktops, hooked up the laptop and did couple of trades. I put everything back together but the printer does not work now. We use it twice a day at most, so nobody remembers when it worked last. I am getting blamed for breaking the stupid thing, supposedly (as the boss says) the network was mirrored on the desktop I disconnected and now they have to bring in a technician to fix it. I thought that worst thing can happen is the desktop has to talk to the router, get the network address and that is it!! Am I wrong?

 

I have no idea what "network was mirrored on the desktop" means, but I am hard-pressed to believe what you did would have any real impact on the printer.

Telling you how to fix this, however, is difficult because we cannot know the nature of your network. At the very least, we would need to know the make and model of the router and the printer.

Best I can do is give you a guess as to what might have happened.

First, it sounds like the internet is still working?

You said the desktop has to talk to the router and get a network address. Really, the desktop and other computers get a network address from a DHCP server--many routers have a dhcp server within them, but not all do and not all have it enabled.

Let's say that this one does and it is actively giving out ip addresses. Next question I would have is about the printer--is it set up to receive ip addresses dynamically, or is the ip address static (manually set)?

I am going to guess that it is dynamically set, meaning it gets an ip address from the dhcp server.

I am also going to guess that the computers were connected to the printer using an standard tcpip port.

So, I think that you did your little connect disconnect thing right at the moment when your printer's ip address lease had expired. Your Laptop grabbed the ip address previously used by the printer. It did not grab the ip address of the desktop, because that lease had not expired. Later, you disconnected your laptop, but the lease time did not allow the printer to get the old ip address back, so it grabbed a new one. Now all your computers are printing to the wrong tcpip port.

That is my guess, but it is sheer speculation, but it basically fits your scenario.

Truth is, your network tech should have set the printer's network address manually and put it outside the dhcp scope (the range of ip addresses), then mapped the printer tcpip port. That way this would never have happened.

How you get this all working again depends on how you want to do it.

Easiest way is on your printer, you should be able to print out a configuration page showing information, including the current lan address

Now go to the XP machines, go to control panel > printers, right click the printers, choose PROPERTIES, go to the ports page, scroll down to the port that was being used, choose the EDIT button, and then change the ip address to the current ip address on the paper you printed out.

Repeat on other machine.

Personally, I'd set it up right, with a static ip address outside the dhcp scope, but that may mean monkeying with the router. The above should get the boss off your back

 

My luck . I was loosing money on some shorts, the moment I sold them everything went down. Looks like I picked the right moment with my laptop too. The tech most likely has already been there and confirmed that I "broke the mirror" etc., our IT people aren't very sophisticated. Guess I will have to take
everybody to Joe's for wings and beer. Thanks for answering though, I will check the steps anyways, have to know how it works.