re-ordering a list

I have been charged with tacking some info for the printers our company uses across the region. I need to populate a "Print Out" based on a printer selected from a dropdown. To make life easier, I want to sort the list. In the data source there are a few unnamed printers. so I run a formula to remove the blanks, then I run another to create an order list (listing which printer is first -by row number-, second, third, etc.).

My problem is that there are a few with the same name. It seems that when I run the formula:
=IF(ISNUMBER(IF($A2<>"",1+COUNTIF($A$2:$A$300,"<"&$A2))),IF($A2<>"",1+COUNTIF($A$2:$A$300,"<"&$A2)),"")

I get duplicate numbers (39 comes up twice) and becuase of this, when I try to list them in order, when I try to place the 40th item, I get an error, since there is no item labeled 40.

I tried added the row number to the end of the name (so that 2 of the same name would have a different sufix, such as - 2 or - 3), but it still doesn't work. Mind you, the above formual was found online (and slightley modified to error check), and seems to work except with duplicate names...

I have made a sample (with only 30 active cells) and an easy to read list of names. Can someone tell me why it the countif is not incrementing from printerTOR-2 to printerTOR-7? If you look at the outcome of the above formula, they both are listed 8th...

use colume b
=IF(ISNUMBER(IF($B2<>"",1+COUNTIF($B$2:$B$269,"<"&$B2))),IF($B2<>"",1+COUNTIF($B$2:$B$269,"<"&$B2)),"")

face palm to myself... I had about 6 columns of formulas, I forgot to shift that over... Funny, I did that and there are no duplicated numbers, but for some reason the numbers start at 20.... I guess the 10 blank spots would take up the first 10 spots...

am I going about this the right way? I'm kind of bullying my way through this stuff...