Possible solution to NETWORK SHARES/Printer/Scanner driver is suddenly not working

NETWORK SHARES / PRINTER / SCANNER DRIVER SUDDENLY NOT WORKING:

This has happened to me more than once—on both Windows 10 and, most recently, today on my Windows 11 system. A previously reliable printer or scanner driver suddenly stopped working.

In one case, I was using a Windows 10 Professional workstation as a family file server. Out of nowhere, it became inaccessible from every other device on the home network. After a lot of frustration—and reading multiple “expert” posts that only repeated basic driver reinstallation steps—I decided to check my network settings. Sure enough, a recent Microsoft update had changed my home network classification from Private to Public. As many of you know, this silently reconfigures various underlying permissions.

I went through all my systems and made sure they were set to recognize the home network as Private. Once I did that, everything started working again.

Today, I encountered a similar issue: an older TWAIN driver for an HP 8710 AIO printer stopped working. On another system, I couldn’t detect any printer drivers at all. When I logged in with my admin account, I found—once again—that the network had been set to Public. I changed it back to Private, and like before, the necessary ports and permissions were restored. My printers were detected, and the TWAIN driver worked.

I hope this helps someone out there resolve a few of these frustrating issues.