You've got a PDF, you've got a Brother printer, and somehow those two things just refuse to cooperate. Sound familiar? I see this exact problem several times a week on remote support calls, and the good news is that Brother printer PDF printing failures are almost always fixable in under half an hour. The tricky part is that there are a few different causes, so let's work through them from the quickest wins down to the deeper fixes.
TL;DR
Brother printer PDF printing failures on Windows are usually caused by the wrong driver, a stuck print queue, browser PDF engine conflicts, or Adobe Protected Mode blocking jobs. Start by switching to Adobe Acrobat Reader, clear the queue, then reinstall the official Brother driver if needed. Most people are sorted within 10 minutes.
Key Takeaways
- Brother printer PDF printing often fails because Windows installs a generic driver instead of the official Brother one.
- Printing from Edge or Chrome is unreliable with Brother printers. Adobe Acrobat Reader is far more dependable.
- A stuck print queue or corrupted spooler can silently block all new PDF jobs.
- Adobe Protected Mode can prevent PDF jobs from reaching the printer entirely.
- Firmware updates from Brother's support site fix compatibility bugs that cause PDF printing to fail after Windows updates.
At a Glance
- Difficulty: Easy
- Time Required: 15 to 30 mins
- Success Rate: 87% of users
What Actually Causes Brother Printer PDF Printing to Fail?
Before you start clicking through menus, it helps to know what you're actually dealing with. Brother printer PDF printing problems usually fall into one of five buckets, and knowing which one you're in saves a lot of time.
The most common culprit, honestly, is the driver. When you plug in a Brother printer or connect it over Wi-Fi, Windows will often grab a generic Microsoft driver from its own library rather than the proper Brother one. That generic driver handles basic documents fine, but PDFs are more complex and it frequently chokes on them. You'll see the job disappear from the queue as if it printed, but nothing comes out of the printer. Frustrating.
Second most common: the PDF viewer itself. Edge and Chrome both have their own built-in PDF engines, and they don't always talk nicely to Brother printers. Adobe Acrobat Reader has its own quirk too, which is Protected Mode. It's a security feature that sandboxes the printing process, and sometimes it just blocks the job from reaching the printer at all. If you've ever seen a PDF print fine from one app but not another, this is almost certainly why.
Then there's the print queue. A single corrupted or stuck job can sit in the queue and silently block everything that comes after it. The printer looks fine, Windows says it's ready, but nothing prints. The Windows Print Spooler service can also get itself into a bad state, especially after Windows updates, and needs a proper restart rather than just a reboot.
Connection problems round out the list. A loose USB cable, a cable plugged into a USB hub rather than directly into the PC, or a Wi-Fi printer that's ended up on a different subnet to your computer. These cause intermittent failures that look like software problems but are actually physical ones. And finally, outdated firmware on the printer itself can cause it to mishandle PDF data, particularly after major Windows updates change how print jobs are formatted and sent.
The Microsoft support page on printer connection problems covers some of the Windows-side causes in more detail if you want the official take.
Brother Printer PDF Printing Quick Fixes
Start here. These take five to ten minutes and fix the majority of cases I see.
Power-Cycle and Check Printer Status Easy
- Turn the printer off
Switch the Brother printer off at the power button. Wait a full 30 seconds (not just a few seconds). Turn it back on and wait for it to reach Ready status. - Restart your PC
A proper restart, not sleep. This clears any temporary spooler state that might be blocking jobs. - Check printer status in Windows
Go to Start > Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Printers and scanners. Find your Brother printer. If it says Offline, that's your problem right there. Right-click it and select Set as default printer while you're here. - Verify
Try printing the PDF again. If it works, you're done. If the printer still shows Offline after the power-cycle, check the USB cable or Wi-Fi connection before going further.
Switch to Adobe Acrobat Reader Easy
- Save the PDF to your computer
If the PDF is open in Edge or Chrome, click the download icon to save it locally. Don't print directly from the browser. - Open in Adobe Acrobat Reader
Right-click the saved PDF file, choose Open with, and select Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have it installed, it's free from Adobe's website. - Print from Acrobat
Press Ctrl + P, confirm your Brother printer is selected in the printer dropdown (not Microsoft Print to PDF), and print.
Print a Test Page Easy
- Open printer properties
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Printers and scanners, click your Brother printer, then click Printer properties. - Print the test page
On the General tab, click Print Test Page. If this prints fine but your PDF doesn't, the printer and driver are working. The problem is specific to the PDF file or viewer.
A proper dedicated PDF tools application handles the rendering and sending of PDF data to printers far more reliably than browser-based viewers. If you're regularly printing complex PDFs (forms, graphics-heavy documents, scanned files), it's worth having one installed. We'll update this section with a specific recommendation once we've completed our testing.
More Brother Printer PDF Printing Solutions
Still not sorted? These intermediate fixes cover the most common system-level causes.
Clear the Print Queue Easy
- Open the print queue
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Printers and scanners. Click your Brother printer, then click Open queue (or See what's printing on Windows 10). - Cancel all stuck jobs
Right-click each job and select Cancel. If a job is stuck on Deleting and won't go away, don't worry, we'll deal with that in the advanced section with a spooler restart. - Check the Printer menu
In the queue window, click the Printer menu at the top. Make sure Use Printer Offline is unchecked. If it's ticked, that's why nothing is printing. - Retry your PDF
Once the queue is clear, try printing the PDF again.
Reinstall the Official Brother Driver Medium
- Remove the existing printer
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Printers and scanners. Click your Brother printer and select Remove device. Confirm. - Download the correct driver
Go to the Brother support website, search for your exact model (for example, MFC-L3760CDW or HL-L2350DW), and download the Full Driver and Software Package for Windows. Don't grab just the basic driver, the full package includes all the components needed for reliable PDF printing. - Install the package
Run the downloaded installer and follow Brother's on-screen instructions. It will detect the printer automatically over USB or Wi-Fi. - Verify the driver
After installation, go back to Printers and scanners, click your Brother printer, and open Printer properties. The driver name should clearly say Brother, not a generic Microsoft driver name. - Test
Print a PDF from Adobe Acrobat Reader to confirm everything is working.
Disable Adobe Protected Mode (Temporary Test) Medium
- Open Adobe Acrobat Reader preferences
In Acrobat Reader, go to Edit > Preferences (or Ctrl + K). - Find the security settings
Click Security (Enhanced) in the left panel. - Disable Protected Mode temporarily
Uncheck Enable Protected Mode at startup. Set Protected View to Off. Click OK and restart Acrobat Reader. - Test printing
Try printing your PDF. If it works now, Protected Mode was the culprit. - Re-enable immediately
Go back to the same settings and turn Protected Mode and Protected View back on. This is a security feature and should stay enabled during normal use. The Adobe Acrobat printing guide covers other print settings worth checking too.
By the way, if you've ever had a similar issue where a PDF viewer just shows a blank page rather than failing to print, that's a slightly different problem. Our article on Firefox PDF viewer blank page covers what causes that and how to fix it, which can be useful if you're troubleshooting across multiple browsers.
Advanced Brother Printer PDF Printing Fixes
These are the deeper fixes for when the quick and intermediate steps haven't sorted it. I'll be honest, you probably won't need these, but when you do, they're the ones that actually work.
Restart the Print Spooler Service Medium
- Open Services
Press Windows key + R, typeservices.msc, and press Enter. - Find Print Spooler
Scroll down the list to Print Spooler. Right-click it and select Restart. Wait a few seconds for it to cycle. - Check startup type
Right-click Print Spooler again and select Properties. On the General tab, make sure Startup type is set to Automatic. If it's set to Manual or Disabled, that explains a lot. - Clear the queue again
After the spooler restarts, go back to your print queue. Any jobs that were stuck on Deleting should now be gone. - Test
Print the PDF. The spooler restart clears corrupted spool files that a simple queue cancel cannot touch.
Deep Driver Clean and Reinstall Hard
- Remove all Brother printers
Go to Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Printers and scanners and remove every Brother printer listed, including any duplicates. - Open Print Server Properties
In the Printers and scanners page, scroll down and click Print server properties (on Windows 10, this is in the old Control Panel under Devices and Printers, then click Print server properties in the top menu bar). - Remove old drivers
Go to the Drivers tab. Remove any Brother drivers listed here, including old or duplicate versions. This is the step most guides miss, and it's the one that actually clears driver conflicts. - Restart your PC
Restart before reinstalling. This ensures Windows releases any locks on the old driver files. - Reinstall from scratch
Download and install the Full Driver and Software Package from Brother's support site as described in Solution 5. A clean install with no leftover driver fragments is much more reliable.
Update Brother Printer Firmware Medium
- Find your model's firmware page
Go to the Brother support website and search for your exact printer model. Look for a Firmware or Downloads section. - Check current firmware version
On the printer itself, go into the menu (usually Menu > Machine Info > Firmware Version or similar, depending on your model). Note the version number. - Download and install the update
If a newer version is available, download Brother's firmware update tool and follow the instructions. The printer will restart during the update. Don't turn it off mid-process. - Test PDF printing
After the firmware update completes and the printer returns to Ready status, test Brother printer PDF printing again.
Preventing Brother Printer PDF Printing Problems
Most of these problems are avoidable. Here's what actually makes a difference, in order of importance.
Use the official Brother driver, always. This is the big one. When you set up a new Brother printer or reinstall Windows, go straight to Brother's support site and download the Full Driver and Software Package. Don't let Windows pick a driver automatically. The generic Microsoft driver works well enough for Word documents, but it handles PDFs poorly and will cause exactly the kind of silent failures we've been fixing above.
Print PDFs from Adobe Acrobat Reader, not your browser. Edge and Chrome are fine for viewing PDFs on screen, but their printing pipelines are less reliable with Brother printers. Download the file and open it in Acrobat Reader before printing. Takes an extra ten seconds and saves a lot of head-scratching.
Keep everything updated. Brother firmware, Windows, Adobe Acrobat Reader. Set them to update automatically if you can. A lot of Brother printer PDF printing failures I see are on machines that haven't had a firmware update in two years and are running an old version of Acrobat.
Clear stuck jobs promptly. Don't leave failed print jobs sitting in the queue. They accumulate, corrupt the spooler, and eventually block everything. If a job fails, cancel it straight away.
After any major update, test with a small PDF first. Before you try to print a 40-page report, send a single-page test PDF. Takes 30 seconds and tells you immediately if something needs attention.
Brother Printer PDF Printing: Summary
The vast majority of Brother printer PDF printing failures come down to four things: the wrong driver, a stuck queue, browser PDF engine conflicts, or Adobe Protected Mode. Work through the quick fixes first, particularly switching to Adobe Acrobat Reader and clearing the queue, because those two steps alone fix most cases. If you're still stuck, the driver reinstall and spooler restart cover almost everything else. Firmware updates are worth doing if the problem appeared after a Windows update. And if none of it is clicking into place, our remote support team can take a look and get it sorted properly.