Connection Problem

My wife has an older Acer Aspire One with Windows XP- which she mainly uses for word processing documents through Word Perfect and up to December she was printing to a an HP PhotoSmart Printer, which dies and I replaced with a HP PhotoSmart 5510 All in one Printer. We don't have internet at home as she only needed printing capability which worked fine over the wireless connection to the printer two rooms over in our place.
She never had a problem with the computer finding the printing until we replaced the printer with this new HP. I tried to connect it wirelessly to the new printer but had a problem connected so I got a Belkin router to help out the connection. The problem is when she first turns on the computer and the printer and wants to print, the message comes up ' failure to print, connect find connection' , even though it says it has an excellent connection. Only when we go into control panel to network connection and disable and then enable to connection does it actually make the connection and sends it to the printer. It's getting frustrating for her as we have to do it each time she has to print a document- once it makes the connection it stays with it until you shut down and then start up again. I have done a diagnostic test and everything works out fine. If I reboot the router, that seems to work as well but coming where were a couple of months back where everything worked fine regardless if you didn't have the computer or printer on for weeks and it still worked great, I'm very puzzled.
Any thoughts?

 

There's a few things I'd be trying, first, open up a command prompt (start -> run -> clear the box, type CMD and press enter, you should now have a black screen with white text)

Type the commands below one by one, pressing enter after each one:
NETSH INTERFACE RESET ALL
NETSH FIREWALL RESET
NETSH WINSOCK RESET

After the last command has finished, it will ask you to reboot, but don't do that just yet.

Next try setting a static IP for your wife's computer so the router doesn't have to assign one through DHCP. This may potentially even shave some time off bootup.

Read the manual for the printer and set a static IP on it too. Just make sure the static IP settings, Net Mask and DNS settings all match your Belkin Routers settings and you should be able to get the two linked up just fine.

Now reboot the router, then the printer, then the computer and see if the problem is resolved.

Cheers.

 

Thanks Swarvey,
Pardon my lack of tech savy but.how do I assign an IP address to her computer? I will look through the manual for the way to do it for the printer but I need help for the computer.

 

Are you using Windows XP or Vista/7? they're a little different when it comes to manually assigning IP addresses.

 

I'm using Windows XP

 

To manually set the IP address in XP, right click on the connections icon in your task tray near the clock in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Choose "Open Network Connections"

Now right click on your connection and choose "Properties"

Scroll down the list in the middle until you find "Internet Protocol TCP/IP" and double click it.

Here you can set your IP manually. If you are unsure what to set it as, do the following:
Click Start, then click Run.

Clear the curent run command (if any) and type CMD then press enter / click OK

In the black box that appears, type in IPCONFIG

You will be given a list of your current connections along with their IP address, DNS, Netmask etc, you can basically copy this information as your static IP.