Unable to add my wireless Printer

My Wireless Printer is a Photosmart D110. When i go to add the device in Windows 8 the loading bar just keeps searching for more devices endlessly. I let it run for three hours just to make sure it wasnt super slow. I see no way to manually add printers to this operating system. HAs anyone encountered this problem? If so have you found a solution?

iroken22:
Nice to see you over here at Windows8Forums.
I feel your pain, as I too have experienced the interminable wait while Windows 8 tries to resolve its' own attempt to find printers, I wonder if you leave it run for days if it will ever end or error, it looks like it's trying to find attached devices and then finding none fails in switching over to proximity devices and you can never actually manually add the network resource, be it a shared printer or an actual IP network attached printer. So....
Here's what I've done as a work around which worked for me and hopefully will work for you as well.
Open devices and printers and get rid of any failed attempts at adding the printer (which also seems to take forever, you may have to evoke the remove function twice before it goes away). Then select a random printer that remains (I just used the Microsoft XPS Document Writer) and from the menu bar at the top select "Print Server Properties"
From the resultant window select the ports tab and the add port button
In the case of a network shared printer you'll need to add "Local Port" and in the case of a network attached IP printer you will need to add a Standard TCP/IP Port.
Adding the TCP/IP port is pretty straight forward just type in the IP address of the network attached printer in the Port Name text box
Adding the Local port is a little more complicated you'll want to add it using one of these two formats
\\MachineNameHostingThePrinterShare\ShareNameOfPri nter (\\My-PC\hpdj) where My-PC is the actual machine name of the PC that the printer is attached to and hpdj (Hewlett Packard Desk Jet) is the share name of the printer on that machine.
or
\\IPaddressOfTheMachineHostingThePrinterShare\Shar eNameOfPrinter (\\192.168.1.123\hpdj) where 192.168.1.123 is the IP addresss of the machine that the printer is attached to and hpdj (Hewlett Packard Desk Jet) is the share name of the printer on that machine.
OK, now you have your printer port setup and it's off to Device Manager you go. Just type Device Manager into the search box after clicking the start orb and hit enter ( I know you know how to do that, but this is for others who may not).
Right click the computer at the top of the tree in device manager and choose add legacy hardware
Click next
Select the Install the hardware that I manually select radio button and next.
Select Printers from the list and next
Select Use and existing port and select the port that you have previously created from the drop down list and next
Now you are going to need the driver (Windows 7 Driver should work and there may be a native driver) So....
In the left column select the Manufactuer and in the Right column look for the model driver you are attempting to install.
If not present you'll need to select the Have Disk button and then point the driver installation at the folder where you have previously download and extracted the appropriate drivers for your printer from the manufacturer. (You did that already right??)
Another way I have gotten around an issue with legacy printers and associated driver software is to physically plug the printer into the Windows 8 machine and install it locally first if the Manufacturer doesn't have drivers then likely Windows Update will get it up and running with nominal drivers that should at least support printing if not some of the more advanced features with some AIOs.
Good luck and keep us posted as to how you are progressing.
This is definitely a broken wizard problem and the fact that you can't do this manually without jumping through the extra hoops is troubling.
Regards
Randy

Excellent fix that you have here it works perfectly. Been a long long time since I had to use Add Legacy Hardware!!!!

Glad you found it useful. Yes we don't generally add legacy hardware too much anymore.
Hopefully other members will find it useful as well, or even better, hopefully they'll (MS) fix the issue with the never ending device finder wizard and let it fail over to a similar manual solution as in past OSs.
Regards
Randy

Yea been a long time man I was a windows7forums Moderator back in the early days of that site so yea!!! Hopefully Microsoft fixes the issue cause some people will be driven crazy when trying to add legacy hardware lol