Acer CB3-111 print stopped working"The selected printer is not available or not installed correctly.

I have two identical Acer CB3-111 chromebooks (one for each kid). Today both lost the ability to print.
I have updated one of them to the lastest ChromeOS (62.0.3202.97) but they both still have the problem.

Best way to see the problem is to open a PDF in the browser and hit print. "The selected printer is not available or not installed correctly. Check your printer or try selecting another printer." with a button to "Print using system dialog..."
The button does nothing, loads indefinitely.
This message appears no matter what printer is selected: the Cloud Print printer, Save to PDF, Save to Google Drive, so I don't believe that any one printer driver is the cause.
I have removed and reinstalled the cloud printer anyway, but no difference.

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JackE

Have you followed the troubleshooting suggestions here https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541927?hl=en Jack E/NJ

CTRATX

The way Simcha describes it is exactly also the way my print options are acting. No ability to cancel print or change printer type or to even use the advanced settings tab. These buttons are frozen. Also, i may click on print to PDF but nothing happens as it gets hung. Likewise, I have to ESC to back out of the function as CANCEL tab is frozen as well. I don't think this is a printer certificate or driver problem. I haven't seen any solutions in the Chromebook community about this at all. Does anyone have a clue? CTRATX

JackE

@CTRATX >>>I haven't seen any solutions in the Chromebook community about this at all. Does anyone have a clue?>>>

Did you start a google chromebook thread yet on your issue? Did you get any response? Jack E/NJ

padgett

Is this printing to a Cloud printer or a local one ? Can you print to it with anything else ? I only use a local printer.

obulunaidu1954

I am also facing the same issue. When printing a PDF file, I am also seeing printer not available. I am using a Samsung USB printer for the printing.
When using the same driver for printing HTML or docs, I am able to see it printed successfully. Is there any solution or the problem

SimchaHayyim

I should have posted a follow-up. I discovered the problem, and a work-around.
I learned that the kids' school had disabled the print function.
They wanted to discourage students printing from chromebooks in the school. But they couldn't lock down the devices - they could only lock down the students' Google accounts.
So even though they were using a private chromebook at home, they couldn't print because they were using their school Google user account.

I got around it by exporting a document to PDF, going to the Google Cloud Print website, and uploading the PDF as a print job. A big pain, but doable.

I recently noticed this school year that they've changed the policy - kids can print now.

JackE

SimchaHayyim Thanks for posting your workaround. Can you share what makes cloudprint a 'big' pain for you? Upload speed? The extra steps? Or just the annoyance of having to do it differently? PDFs always seemed to have had quirks and non-intuitive/indirect ways of doing things. Jack E/N

SimchaHayyim

The "big" pain is in explaining the steps to a 10-year-old child. It took several steps and they never remembered how to do it. If they wanted to print, I had to do it.

There were some occasions where the PDF was not a faithful representation of the desired output, but those were rare.