The last posting explained how to find helpful documents on the HP web site as an alternative to using a general search engine like Google. This time I thought I would give an example, which illustrates why it is generally better to search the HP web site.

One of the documents you can find for the Photosmart C8180 (the example product in the last posting) is called “'Print Spooler Unable to Connect to your Printer' Message ...”. As pointed out in this document, a common problem is that a VPN connection blocks communication to the printer. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and is a type of technology used to create a secure connection from a home network to a corporate network so that people can work from home. I have access to a VPN that I can use to work at home, and yes, as a result I have run into the Print Spooler Unable to Connect problem myself.

The problem is that a VPN connection effectively hides your local network. As part of creating that virtual “private” network to keep all your sensitive work information private, it cuts off access from what it considers potentially dangerous public networks, and it considers your home network to be potentially dangerous. I can’t blame them. I know that my daughter loved to download games off the internet and as a typical teenager she wasn’t always as careful as she should have been in what she downloaded. I spent more than one weekend trying to eliminate viruses or other malware that somehow escaped all the antivirus and firewall software. There are times when this made our home network a somewhat dangerous place for a computer system to be. I completely understand why HP didn’t want to allow their corporate computer system to be connected to a network my daughter downloaded games to, at least not without some significant protection.

Imagine someone who hooked up a new network inkjet and a few weeks later connected to their work to check email (over a VPN connection) and then wanted to print one of those emails. Since the VPN cut off their local network, it cut off the connection to their new network printer. Now imagine that they leave their PC to go troubleshoot their printer problem. They spend an hour or two trying different things and it suddenly starts working again; it starts working because their VPN connection timed out due to inactivity and their local network became visible to their PC again. Not knowing what actually happened, they believe that whatever setting or connection they fiddled with last is what fixed the problem. Later they decided to post a review of their experience with their new printer and mention the problem that had printing and how they “fixed” the problem.

Now you can see why general internet searches for how people fixed their network printer problems can be a somewhat risky thing to do.

Next time I’ll discuss ways to print while a VPN connection is active.