If you are a Brother printer user, you must be aware of how great it works. But there can be a few exceptions. Being of technical nature, Brother printers may not work flawlessly always owing to some glitches. Here in this article, we are going to discuss an issue with the Brother printer that must have been faced by most of the users. As we know that a driver plays an important role in the functioning of a printer and in case if it is not doing its job, your Brother printer may stop printing. The same goes for Brother printers that are although considered versatile can go down in the absence of a driver. If your Brother printer driver is unavailable or it won’t install, there must be some factors responsible for it. So let’s find out the causes of this problem and how to deal with it.
Resolve Brother Printer Driver Installation Problem with These Quick Fixes
Whenever there is an issue regarding Brother printer driver installation, you will notice that the driver and software are not helping out the printer in getting its job done i.e. printing. Also, when this happens, you won’t be able to use other features of your printer. You may also encounter some error message like ‘Unexpected error encountered’ while opening the software or giving print commands. Here are the top solutions that will help you out with it:
1. Restart everything from Printer to Computer
Whenever you realize that you can’t install a Brother printer on Windows 10 or any other operating system, you must give a fresh restart to all your devices. Reboot your printer and computer and let the printer become idle. Then give your Brother printer a print command and see if it functions normally. Make sure both the printer and the computer are connected to the same network if you are connecting a wireless Brother printer. Make sure no cables are damaged or defective and it is only the driver that is causing the issue.
2. Remove and Reinstall the Brother Printer
The next step to take when the installation of the Brother printer driver fails is to remove the printer and then reinstall it as explained here:
Remove your Brother Printer
- Using the ‘Control Panel’, go to the ‘Devices and Printers’ section where you will find all the printers connected to your computer.
- Select your problematic Brother Printer and right-click on it; click on ‘Remove Device’.
- Click ‘Yes’ to confirm
Reinstall your Brother Printer
- Go to ‘Control Panel’ from Start menu and then click on ‘Add a device’
- Windows will start looking for printers to add to your computer. When you see your Brother printer listed there, click on it and follow the prompts to reinstall it.
- You can even add your printer manually if it is not listed there; click on the option ‘The Printer that I want isn’t listed’
- Now, connect your Brother printer to the computer or laptop using a USB cable and click on the option ‘Add a Local Printer or Network Printer with manual settings’; hit ‘Next’.
- Select the option ‘Use an existing port’ and then click on ‘Next’.
- Now, from the menu, select Brother under the Manufacturer section and then select your printer model number from the list, hit ‘Next’. If you want you can change the name of your printer and then again press ‘Next’ to complete the installation of Brother printer.
- This way you can easily reinstall your Brother printer along with the drivers it needs and finally, you need to print a test page to ensure everything is going fine. Removing and reinstalling will also help when your Brother printer shows offline on Windows or Mac.
3. Restart Print Spooler
The next solution to apply when brother printer installation failed or the driver won’t install is to restart the printer spooler service. The print spooler manages all the printers connected to your device and they create a job for a printer and also get the output from the printer; overall, it lets users continue using the printer without getting interrupted by an ongoing print job. So here is how you can restart the spooler service:
- Using the Start menu, look for services, and click on the Services app.
- In the Services window that opens, look for ‘Print Spooler’ service
- Right-click on ‘Print Spooler’ and then click on ‘Restart’
- Finally, restart your device and then see if the installation error regarding your Brother printer driver got fixed.
4. Disabled Startup Apps
If the Brother printer driver installation process hangs, or freezes in between, you can try disabling Startup apps as the problem can arise due to startup apps running in the background; then see if this resolves the error on Windows 10 and other OS.
- Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to launch Task Manager and click on the ‘Startup’ tab.
- In the Startup section, select each process and click on ‘Disable’.
- Restart the computer and then try to install the Brother printer driver again.
5. Update Brother Printer Driver Manually
If the above solutions didn’t help, you can try updating the Brother printer drivers manually from the Brother Printer’s website.
On the website, check if your printer model supports Windows 10 operating system and if yes, download the latest driver version available for the same and then run the file to install it.
- On the website, enter your printer model number
- Click on the ‘Downloads’ link that appear
- Select your operating system family and version and then click ‘Ok’.
- Next, click on the driver installation link to get the latest version of your Brother printer driver; install it as per the instructions.
These were all the solutions to try if brother printer installation failed or you cannot install the driver; hopefully, it will fix the issue.