The printer that will not print
Work through the six things a printer is actually complaining about, clear a jammed queue, and know which of your four listed printers is the real one.
There is a reason printers are the subject of more jokes than any other machine in the house. They genuinely are the worst of them.
A printer has to be a computer, a radio, a paper-handling machine and a chemistry set at once, and it has to keep talking to a laptop across a house through a wall. Any one of those can drop out for a week and then come back. Engineers expect it. Office workers expect it. There is nothing about a printer failing that reflects on the person standing in front of it.
Key points
- Work through the six checks a printer fault actually needs
- Find the queue, cancel what is stuck in it, and lift the pause
- Pick the real printer out of a list of four and make it the default
- Treat a printer failing as the printer failing, which is what it is
What to remember
- The dull checks — paper, power, the right printer, the queue — catch most faults. The interesting ones almost never do.
- Every press of Print joins a queue. Cancel the queue before you try again, or you will meet all of them later.
- Paused with documents waiting is the commonest printer fault there is, and it is four presses to clear.
Try this
Open the printer list on your own computer and count how many printers are on it. If there is a Copy 1, a fax or something you have never owned, that is the sort of clutter that sends a page to nowhere. Removing the ones that do not exist takes a minute and prevents a puzzle later.
Practice: The printer that will not print. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.