When things are going well, technology can be a wonderful thing but the moment it decides it doesn’t want to work, it can put our whole day on hold. Printers are considered to be the most troublesome of all technology, with paper jams, frozen menu screens and set up malfunctions the most common issues.
In most cases though, it is possible for you to troubleshoot these type of problems yourself and so below you will find five quick fixes for those common printer problems:
Printer isn’t showing up on my device
If the printer isn’t showing up on your laptop or computer, then you need to first check it is still connected to your network. This information will be found in your Settings, then Devices. If the printer does not show up, then you might need to add the printer to your device again.
To do this you will need to click on ‘Add a Printer’. You will then see a list of available printers for you to be able to connect to. If the printer you want is there, then just select that as your option but if it still isn’t showing up then you will need to click on, ‘The printer that I want isn’t listed’ and then try searching by location or name. This should allow you to find the printer manually and set up a connection.
Note: Make sure you already install the drivers that come along with your printer. Mostly every manufacturer will include a CD inside the box. Also you can find the drivers from their offical websites.
Printing is too slow
A slow printer can be painful and this problem can be caused by a number of things, such as too many printing jobs at once, a slow network connection and more. A way to speed up your printing is to adjust the print server configurations for multiple users.
Make sure that the option to print spooled documents is turned on. If you’re wondering what that means, basically documents are spooled to make them ready to print. Those larger documents take the longest to spool and can hold up the printing line because smaller jobs get stuck behind, waiting for larger printing jobs to finish. If this fails, simply try and reboot the printer. That old ‘turn it off and on again’ trick. It should jog the printer on to rearrange the document order.
Printer isn’t printing
When your printer has decided it doesn’t want to print at all, a number of things can be checked to fix the problem.
First, ensure you’ve sent it to the right printer. If you work in an office with multiple printers on a network it can be easy to choose the wrong one.
Next, if that doesn’t work, you can try that ‘off and on again’ trick. Wait a few seconds before turning it back on. The reboot might give it the kick start it needs.
Check the printer tray is fully extended, some printers refuse to do anything before they can recognize that the tray is completely out. This is to avoid paper jams.
You could also double check the paper itself is loaded correctly, printers can be fussy and if some paper is slightly out of line they might refuse to work.
Paper jams
You can reduce the risk of paper jams by simply taking care when you load paper into the device and keeping the edges square. If a paper jam should happen, then your printer will usually alert you and give you an indication of where the jam has occurred, whether that be on exit or arrival. You will need to open your printer to sort the jam out, try not to forcefully pull the paper out as you will only make it worse.
If your printer is constantly getting your paper jammed, then these tips may be of use.
Printer won’t recognize new ink cartridges
You’ve just picked up some shiny new ink cartridges to replace the old dried up ones in your printer. However, the printer won’t acknowledge that these have been replaced. This guide from Toner Giant breaks down lots of different techniques to get it working again but it can be as simple as removing the new cartridges and replacing with the old ones, waiting for them to be recognized, then swapping these back round again.
Next time your printer goes wrong, try out one of these quick fixes and get back to business again.
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