The laptop prints. The iPad says no printers found. Same room, same Wi-Fi, same printer.

They are not doing the same thing.

Your laptop has the printer saved. Somebody set it up once and Windows wrote down the address. It goes straight there every time.

Your tablet saves nothing. Every time you tap Print it shouts across the network asking if any printers are listening. Apple calls its version AirPrint. On Android it is Mopria. Either way the tablet is asking, not remembering.

That question is easy to block. Four things block it.

A guest network. Guest networks exist to keep devices from seeing each other, which is what blocks printing. If the tablet is on the guest network and the printer is on the main one, they will never find each other. Same problem if your router has client isolation turned on. Put the tablet on the main network.

A VPN. If you run a VPN on your phone or tablet, it sends your traffic out to the internet before it goes anywhere. Your own living room stops being reachable. The printer disappears. Turn the VPN off, print, turn it back on. Most VPN apps have a setting to allow local network traffic. Turn that on and the problem goes away for good.

Two Wi-Fi names. Some routers put 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz on separate names, and some internet provider boxes keep them on separate networks underneath. Most home printers are 2.4 GHz only. If your tablet is on the 5 GHz name and the router treats them as two networks, the printer is invisible to the tablet. Connect both to the same network name.

The printer is too old for it.  AirPrint and Mopria arrived around 2010 and older printers aren't compatible. That printer is not broken and it will keep printing from your computer for years. It just cannot take a job from a tablet directly. Email the document to yourself and print it from the computer, or put the file in a shared folder. That is not a defeat. It is a 15 year old printer doing what 15 year old printers do.

One thing I will not tell you to do is install the manufacturer's app on your tablet. They want an account, they push ink subscriptions, and they still rely on the same discovery that is already failing. The app is not the fix for this.

More on how the network underneath this works: how Wi-Fi works, and why it sometimes does not. And on guest networks, which are worth having for the right reasons: read this.

If you want somebody to sort out what is blocking your printing, that is a remote session and it is quick. Book at pcrescue.me.

Mike
PCRescue | Portland, ME