Well I needed a good laser printer for windows that was wireless, so I did my homework and found out mostly all reviews were positive on a Brother HL-2170W. I purchased the printer and seen how it said “Easy Installation.” Yea, it would have been if it included a few simple configs in the manual!
Well I take the printer out the box and I begin installing it like a normal printer. Only thing different is that I have an ethernet cable that I have to attach to my router from the printer. By the way, I am installing this on my desktop computer with Windows XP, yea I still have XP and I am not giving it up for Vista, no way in hell! Now this printer can be configured as USB, wired or wireless. I choose the wired, since its more secure. After I hook up the power cord, and the ethernet cable into my router I then bust open the CD to install the drivers. Cool everything went fine test page printed out, thought it was finished. I log into my laptop so I can try the wireless print and make sure everything is printing fine.

An hour goes by, I am getting frustrated and cannot figure out why my laptop will not pick up the printer from my network settings. I followed the instructions, installed the drivers and printed a test page, why can’t my laptop detect the printer? After digging around on my desktop computer I found in the Start>Control Panel>Printers and Other Hardware>Printers and Faxes, the Brother HL-2170W series. I right click and what do I see? A SHARE option. Oh my, didn’t know I had to share this printer so it could be detected over the network, as this is my first time installing a wireless printer. So after I share the printer, I check my laptop and the wireless networks. STILL not there, Now I am getting mad. I calm myself down and decide to try the Start>Control Panel>Printers and Other Hardware then I clicked the Add Printer, then I followed the Wizard and sure enough my printer was not located on it, so it gave me the option to Update, so I did. 10 minutes later it finally updates with my printer and after clicking a few OK’s it printed a test page and was successful!

Now why couldn’t they put that in there? WHY??????? Just thought I would vent a little bit. But all is good and the printer is great. Prints fast, accurate and with no problems. The only thing bugging me is, for some reason when it prints my lights in the room dim. I wonder how much freaking power this draws! Oh well!

Here is a summary of the installation procedures for the Brother HL-2170W with the ethernet cable option. I will put it in order in case anyone needs for reference instead of digging it out.

1.Install power supply.

2.Install ethernet cable to router.(any available port that is open)

3.Install drivers that came with the printer.
3a.In the CD, Click Install Printer Driver.
3b.Click Network cable users.
3c.Click Yes.
3d.Choose the Brother Peer-to-Peer Network Printer, then click Next.
3e.Choose the Search the network for devices and choose from a list of discovered devices. Click Next.
3f.Choose the Brother printer.
3g.Click finish.

4.On the computer that the printer was installed goto Start>Control Panel>Printers and Other Hardware>Printers and Faxes and right click the Brother HL-2170W and click Share.

5.On the laptop or wireless desktop that you would like to print from goto Start>Control Panel>Printers and Other Hardware and click Add Printer.
5a.Click Next.
5b.Select “Local printer attached to this computer” and make sure the “Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play Printer” box is checked. Click Next.
5c.Mine prompted with “The wizard was unable to detect any Printers. To install manually click Next.” Click Next.
5d.Select the “Use the following port: (Standard TCP/IP Port).” Click Next.
5e.Browse for the Brother HL-2170W, if its not on there click the Windows Update. After it updates it should be in there. Once you select the Brother HL-2170W, click Next.
5f.That should be it, let it install and when prompted to print a test page, try it.

Well, this is how I got my printer up and running. Total time to install: 80 mins. Thanks to the no good instruction manual, this could have been done in about 15 mins. The info could be in the manual, but I didn’t see it. Good Luck!