Brother printer allows for spotless printing only when accompanied by the right driver. A printer driver is designed in such a way that it aids your printer in communicating with the computer. The same is the case with the Brother printer driver that has to be installed to properly receive the data or print command sent by your computer. But there can be several instances where the printer says the driver is unavailable even if the driver is already installed.
So if you are also facing this error i.e. the driver is unavailable and you are not able to print normally with your Brother printer, this guide has covered all the available fixes for you.
You can easily troubleshoot the issue on your own if you apply the given directions properly.
Solutions for the Error ‘Brother Printer Driver is Unavailable’
Method-1 Reinstall the printer
To uninstall and reinstall your Brother printer, follow the given directions carefully:
- Using your keyboard, press Windows and R and then type ‘Control Panel’; press ‘Enter’ to open it.
- In the control panel, click on the ‘Devices and Printers’ option.
- You will find all your printers listed there; right-click on your Brother printer and then select the option ‘Remove device’ option.
- Once done with that, again press Windows + R and type ‘devmgmt.msc’. Right-click on your Brother printer from the ‘Print queues’, click on the ‘Uninstall device’ option.
- After you have uninstalled the device, now is the time to remove the printer application
- Now hit Windows + R on your keyboard, write ‘appwiz.cpl’ in the dialogue box that appears, and press Enter. There all the applications will be displayed. Choose the ‘Uninstall’ option after right-clicking on your printer application.
- Disconnect your printer from the computer if connected by USB or disengage it from the router in case it is wireless. Afterward, turn your computer, printer, and router off and take out their power supply.
- After waiting for 10 minutes plug everything back in and start all the modules. Connect the printer to your computer through a USB cable and let it install the required drivers.
- Once done with that, go to the ‘Devices and Printers’ section and right-click on your printer and select the option ‘Set as default printer’. Now, try to print a test page and check if the issue got fixed.
Method-2 Reinstall the latest printer driver
It is important to update brother printer software and driver as and when you get the latest version so as to avoid any error and let the printer work efficiently.
To reinstall the Brother printer driver, first of all, you have to completely remove it from your device.
Uninstall the Printer driver
To uninstall the outdated driver for your Brother printer, follow the given steps:
- Via Start menu, go to ‘All Applications’, and then open ‘Brother Utilities’.
- From the drop-down menu of the model name, select your Brother printer model name.
- In the left navigation bar, click on ‘Tools’ and then click on ‘Uninstall’.
- Follow the instructions to completely uninstall the drivers of the Brother printer.
Install the Printer Driver
Once you uninstalled the already existing driver, follow the given instructions to install the latest version of the Brother printer driver:
- Go to the official page of Brother Supports and Downloads.
- You can search for the required driver by entering the model name in the given search box and press ‘Submit’. Alternatively, you can select from the product categories available just below the search box.
- Once you have selected your printer model, you will be required to select your operating system; select the OS family and version, and press ‘Ok’.
- On the next page, you will get the correct and latest driver and firmware for your Brother printer; follow the instructions to install them on your device.
Method-3 Update the Operating System
To let the printer run flawlessly, it is important to have all the latest updates installed. If the updates aren’t installed, you are going to face an error messaged like ‘Brother printer driver is unavailable’ especially on Windows 10. So in order to fix the issue, it is important to get all the updates as explained below:
Windows 7
- In the search box of the start menu, enter ‘Update’ and from the search results, click on the option ‘Check for Updates’.
- Next, click on the option ‘Install Updates’, and when the updates are completely installed, restart your device and check if the problem got resolved.
Windows 10
- In the start menu, enter ‘update’ in the search box and from the search results, click on ‘Check for updates’.
- By this time, Windows will start looking for and installing updates automatically.
- Once the updates are fully installed, check if the driver error gets resolved.
Method-4 Run the Printer Troubleshooter
For Windows users, there is a printer troubleshooter that they get inbuilt and the main purpose of this tool is to fix all the printer related errors including ‘Driver is unavailable’. To use this tool, follow the given directions:
- Press Windows + R and the Run dialogue box will appear; type ‘control panel’ and then click on ‘Ok’.
- Move to the top-right corner of the window you will see a search box; type ‘Troubleshoot’ and from the list that shows up, select ‘Troubleshooting’.
- Click on ‘View All’ from the navigation pane on the left of the troubleshooting menu.
- You will get all the troubleshooters available on your device in a list; look for the ‘Printer’ option and click on it.
- Press ‘Next’ to let the printer troubleshooter start detecting the issue and the possible solutions.
- Windows will start detecting the problems; follow the given instructions to fix the driver error regarding your Brother printer.
