What to Do When Your Printer Stops Appearing in Devices and Printers

Why Printers Disappear From This List

A printer usually drops out of Devices and Printers for one of these reasons:

• The Print Spooler service (the background process that manages print jobs and printer detection) has crashed or stopped.
• A recent Windows Update 🔃 replaced or removed the printer driver.
• The printer is a USB device and the port, cable, or USB controller dropped the connection.
• The printer is a network or Wi-Fi 📶 device that went to sleep, changed IP address, or lost its network connection.
• The device is still installed but hidden from view because Windows is only showing non-hidden devices.
• On a work or school PC, a Group Policy setting managed by IT is filtering which printers show up.
  

Restart the Print Spooler Service

It restarts the Print Spooler (a background service that detects and manages your printers), without changing your driver or settings. This requires administrator rights.

1. Open the Services app. Press Win+R, type services.msc, and press Enter. You’ll see a list of every Windows service running on your PC.

   

2. Scroll down and find Print Spooler in the list.

   

3. Right-click Print Spooler and select Restart. If Restart is greyed out, select Start instead — this means the service had already stopped completely.
4. Close the Services window and reopen Devices and Printers. Check whether your printer is back in the list.

If restarting the service throws an error, or the service won’t start at all, the spooler’s queue files may be corrupted. Clear them out before trying again:

1. Open Services and stop the Print Spooler service (right-click it, select Stop).

   

2. Open File Explorer and go to C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS.
3. Delete every file inside that folder. These are stuck print job files, not printer settings, so deleting them is safe and won't remove your printer or driver.
4. Go back to Services and start the Print Spooler service again.

Run the Printer Troubleshooter

Windows 11 has a built-in troubleshooter that checks for the most common printer problems automatically, including missing devices.

1. Open Settings and go to System, then Troubleshoot.
2. Select Other troubleshooters.

   

3. Find Printer in the list and select Run.
4. Follow the prompts. Windows will scan for spooler errors, driver issues, and offline devices, and tell you what it found and fixed.

If the troubleshooter reports "we couldn't identify the problem," that doesn't mean nothing is wrong — it means the fix needs to be manual, so move on to checking hidden devices and drivers below.

Check for Hidden Devices

Windows might be hiding a printer that's installed but not currently reachable. This happens with USB printers that got unplugged or network printers that went offline.

1. Open Devices and Printers (search for it from the Start menu, or run control printers from the Run dialog).
2. Check whether the printer shows up greyed out or with a small warning icon. A greyed-out icon means Windows still has the printer installed but can't currently reach it — that's a connection problem, not a missing-driver problem.
3. Open Device Manager (right-click the Start button and select it) and go to the View menu.
4. Select Show hidden devices. Expand Print queues or Printers and look for your device listed as greyed out.
5. If you find it, right-click it and select Uninstall device, then reconnect the printer and let Windows reinstall it automatically. This won't affect any other devices or settings.

Check Printers & Scanners in Settings

Windows 11 keeps printer management in two places. A device can appear in one but not the other depending on how it was installed.

1. Open Settings and go to Bluetooth & devices, then Printers & scanners.

   

2. Check whether your printer is listed here even if it's missing from Devices and Printers. If it is, select it and check its status.
3. If it's not listed here either, select Add device at the top and let Windows search for it.
4. If Windows doesn't find it automatically, select Add manually, then Select a shared printer by name or Add a local printer or network printer with manual settings, depending on how the printer connects.

   

Update or Reinstall the Printer Driver

If the printer still doesn't appear after restarting the spooler and checking hidden devices, the driver itself may be missing or corrupted — this is especially common right after a Windows Update.

1. Open Device Manager and expand Print queues or Printers.
2. Right-click your printer (if it's listed at all) and select Update driver, then Search automatically for drivers.
3. If Windows says the best driver is already installed but the printer still won't show up, uninstall it instead: right-click the device and select Uninstall device. Reinstalling a driver won't affect saved documents or print history. You will need to reconfigure any custom print preferences (like default paper size) afterward.
4. Go to the printer manufacturer's website and download the current driver for your exact model and your version of Windows. Run the installer and reconnect the printer when prompted.

If you can't find a driver for your exact model, check whether the manufacturer offers a universal or "class" driver — most manufacturers keep one for older models that Windows Update no longer ships automatically.

Check USB Connections and Ports

For USB-connected printers, a loose cable or a failing port is one of the most common causes of a printer silently disappearing.

1. Unplug the USB cable from both the printer and the PC, then plug it back in firmly on both ends.
2. Try a different USB port on your PC, ideally one directly on the back of a desktop rather than a front-panel port or a hub.
3. Try a different USB cable if you have one. Cables fail more often than people expect, especially on printers that get moved around.
4. Open Device Manager and check under Universal Serial Bus controllers for any entry with a yellow warning icon, which indicates a USB problem separate from the printer itself.

Check Network and Wi-Fi Printers

Network printers disappear from the list for different reasons than USB ones — usually because the PC and printer are no longer on the same network path.

1. Confirm the printer is powered on and connected to your network. Most printers have a small screen or status light showing Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection status.
2. Check whether the printer's IP address changed. Many home routers reassign IP addresses periodically, which breaks a connection set up with a fixed address (where you told the PC to look for the printer in one specific spot). Check the printer's network settings menu for its current IP address and compare it to what's configured on the PC.
3. Open Command Prompt and run ping followed by the printer's IP address to confirm the PC can actually reach it on the network. If the ping times out, the problem is network connectivity, not Windows.
4. Make sure both the PC and printer are on the same network — this matters especially if your router broadcasts separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, or a guest network, since devices on different networks often can't see each other.

Check for Group Policy Restrictions on Managed PCs

If this is a work, school, or domain-joined computer, an IT administrator may have configured policies that control which printers a user can see or connect to. This isn't something you can fix yourself in most cases.

1. Open Registry Editor by pressing Windows key + R, typing regedit, and pressing Enter. This requires administrator rights, and editing the wrong value in Registry Editor can cause other problems, so don't change anything here unless you're confident about what you're editing.

   

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\WPP to check whether printer-related policies exist on this machine. If this key exists and contains values you didn't set yourself, the restriction is coming from a managed policy, and you should contact your IT department rather than change it.
3. Also check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers, which is where Windows stores its list of installed printer entries at the system level. If your printer's entry exists here but not in Devices and Printers, that's a sign the spooler service needs restarting rather than a driver problem — go back to the first section above.

If you're not sure, skip the Registry Editor and stick with the Settings app and Device Manager steps above instead — they're safer and easier to undo.

Add the Printer Manually as a Last Resort

If none of the above brings the printer back, add it again from scratch. This doesn't delete any documents you've printed before, and it's fully reversible — you can remove the printer again the same way if it doesn't work.

1. Open Settings, go to Bluetooth & devices, then Printers & scanners.
2. Select Add device and wait for Windows to scan.

   

3. If your printer isn't found, select The printer that I want isn't listed (this option appears in the older Add Printer wizard, which you can reach from Devices and Printers by selecting Add a printer).
4. Choose the matching option — a local printer with manual port settings, a network printer by name, or a Bluetooth printer — depending on how the device connects.
5. Follow the prompts to select or install the driver, then finish the wizard. Your printer should now appear in both Devices and Printers and Printers & scanners.

If This Didn't Work

If the printer still won't show up after all of this, the problem is more likely hardware than software — try the printer on a different PC if you have one available, which tells you immediately whether the fault is with Windows or the printer itself. If you manage multiple printers or print servers regularly, it's also worth getting familiar with the Print Management console, which gives a more detailed view of driver versions and print queues than Devices and Printers ever shows. And if driver conflicts are a recurring problem on this PC, checking Device Manager for other flagged hardware issues is a good next habit to build.