Firewall Change to Blame
Diagnosing the Problem
I have a Brother HL-2280DW printer/scanner which has been working perfectly for several years. For example, I could scan a document from the printer/scanner to my local PC without a problem. Recently after a Windows update (I’m using version 1909 build 18363.836) I could no longer scan from the scanner to the PC. I could scan by going to the PC and using Brother utilities. However, I could not scan when standing at the scanner. I suspected a firewall setting had been removed by a recent Windows Update. To verify this I temporarily disabled the Windows Firewall.
First, you should check if this is your problem by temporarily turning off Windows Firewall. The steps to turn off Windows Firewall:
To turn Microsoft Defender Firewall on or off:
- Select the Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Security and then Firewall & network protection.
- To turn it off, under Microsoft Defender Firewall, switch the setting to Off. Turning off Windows Defender Firewall could make your device (and network, if you have one) more vulnerable to unauthorized access. If there’s an app you need to use that’s being blocked, you can allow it through the firewall, instead of turning the firewall off.
- To turn it on, under Microsoft Defender Firewall, switch the setting to On. If your device is connected to a network, network policy settings might prevent you from completing these steps. For more info, contact your administrator.
After turning off the Windows Firewall, I could once again scan from the scanner to the PC. After investigating on the internet and the Brother printer site I found that UDP port 54925 needed an inbound rule in Windows Firewall, to allow scanning from the scanner. Apparently, the recent Windows Update removed this rule.
Although it is possible to put the rule into Windows Firewall using the interface provided by Microsoft, I like working from the command prompt. Here is the command I used to fix my problem. Get to an elevated command prompt, and type the following command. Of course you MUST enter the command EXACTLY as I have typed it below:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Br Scanner Port 54925" dir=in action=allow protocol=UDP localport=54925
Make sure you are at an elevated command prompt. This means that your command prompt title bar MUST say Administrator. Even if you utilized the command to run the Command Prompt as Administrator, if the title bar does not say Administrator, then you are NOT running the Command Prompt as an Administrator.
If all went well, the system should respond with “Ok”.
That is all there is to it and I hope this helps someone.