OK, this is just bizarre. But first, just to clarify, the machine with the problem I’ve been writing about is a 4 year old Dell XPS13 with Windows 11 Home, my wife’s laptop. As far as I can tell, it is running Norton 360 Deluxe.
Here is the bizarre thing. I wrote that my workaround was to use Encrypt.me as the VPN. It worked fine for allowing printing. However, I couldn’t get it to start the VPN automatically. Wouldn’t be problem for me, but my wife (who travels a lot for business and stays in hotels), has no idea of VPN or how it works.
So this morning I uninstalled Encrypt.me. But I couldn’t run the Norton VPN. Then I remembered that I had disabled the Norton VPN service, so I re-enabled it, and set to start automatically.
After a reboot, the Norton VPN started up and allowed printing. I rebooted twice. The first time it allowed printing again, with Secure Boot showing On. This worked one more time. Now it’s back to not working. That is, my two printers both show as “Offline” and I can’t print.
I may just have to leave her machine with VPN off. She needs to print when she’s home, at least.