Chromebook Printing

[jkelleher1]

I have a Samsung ML-2510 printer. I want to print to it from my Chromebook using a USB direct physical cable connection. I downloaded the Chromebook print App from the HP website (HP Print for Chrome). When I try to print, a window comes up that says "now printing to ML-2510", but... nothing happens.  It never prints. 

The printer is working fine on my Windows PC, so it isn't the printer. Any ideas? Do I need a specific driver?

[John_Getzke]

Drivers are necessary for printing.  The driver converts the application data into instructions that the printer can understand called a printer language.  Drivers can be stored on the PC, in the cloud or on the printer itself.

Since Chromebooks use a mobile OS I would bet that HP has not developed OS specific drivers for it.  That suggests that USB printing is not going to be a viable option.  You would have to rely on either cloud printing like ePrint or Google Print or use teh WiFi Direct feature of your printer to WiFi connect to the printer and use whatever driver it has preloaded into it.

As an experiment, try reinstalling your printer as a network printer and see if you can get it to work.  If it does then you can assume HP does not have USB drivers for your OS.

I checked the Drivers and Downloads area for your printer:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/samsung-ml-2510-laser-printer-series/19134750

HP does not offer any driver or software options for your printer.  USB printing is not likely going to work unless you can find someone who created a custom solution or can get some other Chrome print driver to work.

See some recommendations for setting up cloud print on Chrome OS here:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-print-from-a-chromebook/

[jkelleher1]

Thanks very much for researching this for me.  

In order to use the printer as a network printer, it would need to have stand-alone wireless capability if I'm not mistaken.  Since this printer does not have WiFi, I don't believe I can use it that way.  It is currently connected to a Windows PC, which prints to it without a problem thru the USB port.  But I don't think there is any way to use the Chromebook to send the print job to the PC through the network, which would in turn drive the pritner connected to the PC's USB port, unless you know of some way to do that (?).  

[John_Getzke]

Without a print driver there will be no way to directly send print jobs to the printer from the Chromebook.

Your best bet is to use the network to either email from one PC to the other or setup a shared folder on the PC.  Instead of printing you would then copy the document to the shared folder.  Then open the document and print from the windows PC.  I'd bet emailing documents to yourself would be easier and more consistent though.

Or you can use a USB drive to copy files then print from the Windows PC too.  I do that all the time.