SHARP printers – Remote administration with VNC viewer

Today i had a typical customer support. A printer does not print. Well, this is nothing spectacular. But wait for the surprise…

With remotesupport i checked all the drivers and printer settings on the print server and compared them also with same type of printers located in other rooms at this customer. I did some testing on the client and we finally found out that in Microsoft Word you can adjust / change the page setup. There you can set different paper trays for the first page and all other pages. Well, i had that in mind first, but as always there could be other things which could cause the problem. So we changed this page setup and did another test, this time successful.

In the time of troubleshooting i was in contact with manufacturer support. The customer is using different SHARP printers. And the technician on the phone told me some stuff i never heard until today.

You can control a printer with VNC viewer. I was astonished.

This is really easy to setup. It can save you as an admin some time and also prevent to go onsite for just doing one quick setting. Also your customer saves some meters walking between computer and printer.

I tested this with two different SHARP printers, an MX3070N and a MX-C301W. The way is nearly the same on both printer models. To setup the remote control you have to point your internet browser to the IP address of the printer and login over the webgui with administrator account.

1. In “Settings (administrator)”, select [System Settings] => [Common Settings] => [Operation Settings] => [Condition Settings] => [Remote Operation Settings] => [Remote Software Operation] and select [Allow] for [Operational Authority].

With the two models described above i had to provide the IP address of the computer from where i connect via VNC to the printer (usually the print server). So VNC connections are only allowed from this IP address.

Please refer to the correct manual of your printer:

http://siica.sharpusa.com/product-downloads

You can only setup VNC with printers which have actually a display.

Happy VNC-ing 😉