SNMP and Network Printing in Windows

SNMP can be pretty useful, it is used for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks.  It allows you to get information about a device such as a printer.  Why do I bring this up because if you not careful, it can cause your windows printers to appear offline depending on how your printer driver is configured.

Now when we setup printers we don't deviate to far from the defaults if at all.  However because we have a number of printers that are under contract and to automate the submission of the use count we were asked to install a piece of software called FMAUDIT.  Now the setup of the software was really easy but you don't get to control any of the settings until after you've installed the software.  By then it has scanned your network, I would prefer to have it ask me to scan the network while it is install or if I would prefer to add the network later (forewarning to anyone installing the software).  The software uses SNMP to scan the network and add all printers using the SNMP community name "scanme1".  It added all my printers with "scanme1" to it's database, So I decided to change the SNMP of our contract printers to something else lets call it "scanme2".  When I did that the software got the printers and did what it needs to do.  However the Windows printservers suddenly put the printers offline because the driver is using SNMP to talk to the printer.

To view this go to Printer Properties -> Ports -> Configure Ports

Printer Properties Dialog Box

and in the configure ports dialog box you have the option of enabling or disabling SNMP Status and if you have it on but the community name is not correct the printer shows as offline (Which makes total sense).

SNMP Location in the Configure Driver

As you can see below the image is showing that the printer JLL-Toshiba-Copier is offline.

SNMP Community name mismatch causes a printer to show up offline

So you have two options for fixing this issue.

1. Make sure that the SNMP community name in the driver is set to the same as the printer 
2. disable the SNMP status for the windows driver.  

It is pretty useful to have so I just changed the name from SCANME1 to SCANME2, and the printer came back with no problem.  Remember by default windows enables SNMP lookup so do keep that in mind.

Making sure the community name is the same or disabling SNMP in the driver will bring the printer back online.