Brother printer drivers fail to load if AIS installed.

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Having had to deal with this twice now, it’s about time I reported it. :wink:

With AIS 5.0.667 (and earlier), the result of an apparently error-free installation of Brother HL-5350N and most recently HL-2170W on XP Pro SP3 and Vista HB SP2, is that no additional printer appears in the list of printers, nor does the Brother ‘Status Monitor’ icon turn up in the system tray.

A successful workaround varies slightly depending on OS.
XP: Unistall AIS, restart PC, reinstall Brother printer (which now appears in the “Printers and Faxes” list as does the Brother tray icon), reinstall and reconfigure AIS and everything’s cool.
Vista: Uninstall AIS, restart PC and, as if by magic, the Brother printer now appears in the “Printers” list as does the Brother ‘Status Monitor’ icon in the system tray, reinstall and reconfigure AIS.

Notes:
Having not had need to install Brother printers on machines with AIS 5.1 or 6.0, I can’t say for sure whether or not the problem remains.
Today I installed HL-5350N on an XP Pro SP3 machine with avast! Free 5.1.889 without any issues.

2

Thanks for posting what could help others, Vladimyr :slight_smile:

3

This might explain my similar experience with my Brother printer. I have the 5240DN Brother printer and have been using it successfully for well over two years. A few weeks ago after a restart my system using the AVAST! Pro version stopped recognizing the printer after printing one file. I tried reinstalling the drivers but nothing fixed the problem.

My fix was to change from using the NETBIOS (Workgroup) method to the Internet (e.g. URL) method to connect to the printer. How it all works just fine again time and time again.

I’m not sure if this is similar. Honestly, I didn’t think to remove AVAST!, as running with virus support is, well, safe computing.

Anyone have any thoughts on this experience?

Bertram Moshier