Cannot Connect Printer to Laptop

[lumbernicus]

Hi there,

I'm attempting to connect my MacBook Pro to my HP printer. I need it to connect wirelessly, as my laptop does not have an ethernet port.

In the first attempt, both the laptop and printer are on the same network, connected via WiFi. Printer was not discoverable my default "Add Printer". I was able to add by inputting IP Address, however then I could only print a test page, and not any other document.

Second attempt was to connect printer directly to the router. Laptop is Printer was then discoverable. However in the "Use:" dropdown menu, the auto select did not pick up anything. I went to Select Software, chose the the appropriate driver. After clicking "Add", I got the following error message: 

An error occurred while trying to add the selected device.

Unable to communicate with the printer at this time.

I'm out of ideas. Thank you for your help.

[TEJ1602]

@lumbernicus, Welcome to HP Support Community!

To be able to assist you better, I would like to know the following:

• Are the printer and PC connected to the same network?
• Is your router dual-band enabled i.e., both 2.4GHz and 5GHz?
• What is the distance between the router and the printer?
• Is there any antivirus software installed on your computer?
• Could you perform a ping test using the Mac Network Utility and let me know the results?

Use the printer IP address to perform a ping test, the printer IP can be located by selecting the wireless icon on the printer display.

The wireless status menu on your Mac should also give us quite a lot of information that would help us identify the issue. You can press and hold option-click the WiFi icon and then use shift-command-5 to take the screenshot. Press the space bar when the icon turns into a camera. Share the ping test results and the screenshot with us.

Also, check with your Internet service provider if your router is able to forward 'Bonjour packets'. 

Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) service records. The software comes built-in with Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems.

Keep me posted for further assistance.

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