Troubleshooting Printers - CompTIA A+ 220-1201 - 5.6

Troubleshooting printer issues can be

challenging. You never know if the issue

is related to an application, a printer

driver, the operating system, or the

printer itself. One of the ways that you

can narrow down this problem is by

printing a test page from your operating

system. In Windows, there's a built-in

function to create a test page. This

means that you aren't using an

application. You're simply using the

operating system and the device driver

as it's currently configured. You might

also have a way to perform a test print

from the printer itself. That will test

from the hardware of the printer and the

operating system and device driver have

no impact on the printer level test.

Here's an example of a Windows printer

test page. This was created by pressing

that print test page button from the

device driver itself. We're not only

interested in the quality of the output,

but we're also interested in the

information that is contained on the

page. We have information about the

printer properties and how they're

configured. We also know the print

driver properties and we know exactly

what printer driver files are associated

with this

printer. You may find that your printer

test page does not have the quality you

were expecting. For example, you might

have a single line that goes all the way

down the page. If this is an inkjet

printer, then you probably have dirty

print heads. So, simply cleaning those

print heads can probably remove that

line. If this is a laser printer, it's

probably a scratch that is on the

photosensitive drum that's used inside

of that printer. And as the drum is

rotating around, that scratch is simply

leaving a black mark all the way down

the page. If the output is faded or it's

difficult to read what's on the page,

then you're probably running out of

toner or you're very low on ink. And if

you're seeing double images on the page

or there's speckling on the page, then

the laser printer optical drum is

probably not cleaning properly and

you're seeing a ghost or shadow from the

previous rotation of that drum. Here's

what a scratch on that photosensitive

drum would look like. It's just a single

black line that goes all the way down

the page. And if the cleaning process is

not working properly, then you're

probably seeing a normal part of the

page and then a copy of that that's a

little bit lighter later on down the

page. This ghosting will continue until

you're able to correct the cleaning

problem inside of your laser printer.

Here's a page of output you definitely

don't want to see coming out of your

printer. This garbled print might be

caused by a number of different issues.

One of them might be a bad printer

driver or you've specified the wrong

model of printer in your Windows

configuration. In those cases, you might

be sending the wrong page description

language to the printer. The printer

might be expecting PCL and you might be

sending Postcript or vice versa. Of

course, we don't know if this is related

to the print driver or the operating

system or if we have a physical problem

with the printer. So, if you have a way

to print a test print on the printer,

you'll be able to see if you're able to

get good output or if the printer also

provides this garbled output. If your

printer test works properly and your

Windows driver test works properly, then

it could be that the application is

sending bad information to the printer.

You may want to try a different

application or try upgrading the

application you currently have to see if

you can improve the output.

Occasionally, you'll find that the paper

will jam inside the printer. What you

don't want to do is pull that paper so

that you're ripping it and leaving part

of that paper inside the printer

mechanism. Some printers will release

their printer mechanisms when you open

the top of the printer, and that might

make it a lot easier to be able to

remove that paper. If no paper is being

pulled from your printer tray or you're

getting multiple pages pulled at the

same time to go through the printer,

then you might have a problem with

either the paper tray or with the pickup

rollers. These pickup rollers need to be

clean and they do wear over time. If

you're performing a printer maintenance

using an official maintenance kit from

the printer manufacturer, they very

often will include additional pickup

rollers to avoid this kind of problem.

And sometimes you'll notice that the

output from your printer, especially

with a laser printer, will have creases

in the paper itself. That may be because

of a problem in the paper path as it's

moving through the printer, or it may be

that you're using a paper that is a

different weight than what is

recommended by the printer manufacturer.

Make sure you check your printer

documentation so you know exactly what

the recommended weight of paper would be

for that specific printer. Here's a

closer view of these pickup rollers and

the rollers inside of your printer. You

can see that these are relatively new.

They don't seem to have any creases on

them. And you can see there's not much

wear on the rollers that are currently

installed. If your printer is not

printing, but you look at the printer

queue and there's a lot of jobs that are

queued up waiting to be printed, then

your problem might be with the printer

spooler itself. The printer spooler is a

middle point between the application and

the printer. The application sends a

print job to the spooler and the spooler

is responsible for then sending that

print job to the printer. If one of

those print jobs is corrupted, it may

cause this spooler to either crash or

freeze. Some print spoolers will restart

automatically. For example, this one in

Windows on the first failure will

restart this service. The second failure

will restart again, but if there is a

subsequent failure, it will completely

stop and require your intervention. You

may be able to go to your Windows event

viewer, specifically the Windows print

service as part of that event viewer,

and see if any of these corruptions or

any other problems with the print

spooler are occurring. It may just be

that one print job is causing the issue

for everyone else. But once that print

spooler fails, nothing else in the queue

is going to be printed. you as the

administrator are able to delete that

print job or move it to the bottom of

the list, let everything else print, and

then you can troubleshoot that specific

print

job. Our printers commonly make noises,

but they're not usually a grinding

noise. We don't really have to grind

anything up inside the printer to get it

to print properly. Instead, this may

indicate that some other type of problem

is occurring. Maybe it's a paper jam

inside the printer, or maybe an ink

cartridge has come loose or needs to be

seated down so that it doesn't rub

against any other parts of the printer.

Each printer operates in a different way

and has a different number of steps for

troubleshooting. So, make sure you check

the manual for your printer to see what

you should do if you happen to hear any

grinding noises. Or it may be a bad part

that requires a specialist to be able to

take the printer to their office or to

visit on site, take the printer

completely apart, find that bad part,

replace it, and then put everything back

together. This could certainly cause

some noise inside the printer. If you

don't properly seat those ink

cartridges, it will certainly cause some

noise when you finally send a print job

and that carriage tries to go back and

forth inside of the printer. Our

printers do more than simply print

information on a page. Very often they

are also providing finishing services.

That finishing would be collating,

binding, stapling, and performing an

additional task once the output has been

created. Some larger printers will

collate multiple copies together and

then staple each copy as it's created.

Occasionally, you'll have a staple jam

and you'll need to remove that staple to

continue the process. Every printer is a

little bit differently on how you remove

those staple jams. So, make sure you

check with your printer documentation.

And some printers can perform hole

punches. That hole punch is determined

by the application and the driver that

you're using. So, if the holes are not

lining up exactly where you would

expect, make sure you check with the

application that you're using and make

sure you're using the latest print

driver. On most printers, we can choose

to print a portrait mode or a landscape

mode. If you're printing a page in

portrait and you get the output in

landscape, then there has definitely

been a mismatch somewhere along the

line. Normally, this setting is handled

in the print driver of your operating

system. So, make sure you check the

defaults for the print driver and then

also check the settings that you're

sending out when you choose to print

from your application. You may find that

this is a problem with the print driver

and simply upgrading the print driver

will solve the problem. If the print

driver is not telling the printer the

proper orientation, you may be able to

control this at the printer itself.

Printers usually have a default setting

on whether they will print in a portrait

mode or landscape mode, and adjusting

that at the printer may affect all of

the subsequent output from that

device. The printers that we use in our

offices tend to have multiple paper

trays. You can see that on the printer

that we have here that on the bottom is

one, two, three, four different paper

trays that you could select paper from.

When you perform that output from your

application, you would normally tell the

printer when you're sending the print

job that you would like all of the

output to come from the paper that is in

paper tray number one. One of the things

you have to make sure is that the paper

tray that you're choosing matches the

size of the paper associated with the

output. For example, you don't want to

send output that was designed for a

14-in legal size page to a paper tray

that only has 11in letter size paper.

You'll normally see the list of paper

trays in the print driver when you're

ready to print. So, you'll be able to

choose the proper tray from that list.

It might be a good idea as the network

administrator to confirm that the list

of trays that you see in the print

driver matches the trays that are

physically installed on the printer. If

there is a mismatch between the size of

the paper that you wanted to print and

the size of the paper that's in that

print tray, you may see messages on the

screen of your printer that tell you

that this paper is mismatched and you'll

need to load the appropriate page for

this particular

output. Here's a view from the output

where I'm choosing to print to my laser

printer. This says that the paper source

is the main tray and the media is

automatically selected. But you might

want to configure your printer driver

with the specifics of what type of paper

are contained within that main tray. So

here are the properties for this printer

driver. And you can see that I have the

option to decide what a manual feed size

paper would be. In this case on my

printer, it's a letter size paper. And

then you can specify what size of paper

is contained within the main tray. And

you can see there are a number of

options. available that you can

configure for that main tray of the

printer. When you're troubleshooting

these corporate printers, you also have

to be very good at troubleshooting

networks. That's because these printers

tend to be connected to our wired and

our wireless networks. We would want to

perform the same type of network

troubleshooting as we do for any other

device on the network. You would first

need to confirm whether this is a

printer that's connected to the wired

network or the wireless network. That

way, you'll know whether you're

troubleshooting a problem with the cable

or whether you're troubleshooting a

problem with interference on the

wireless network. You would then want to

confirm that the IP address settings of

the printer are configured properly for

that device. So, you want to check the

IP address, the subnet mask, the default

gateway, any DNS settings, and any other

important network configuration

settings. And you may want to check to

see if the print server inside of this

printer is working properly. Most

printers have their own print server and

there's usually a management front end

where you can look at the print server,

stop it, restart it, and perform any

management of the pending print jobs.

And because this is a network device,

you can also look for link lights. For

example, on this printer, it has a

connection on the back of the printer,

and you can see if it's connected to the

network, if it has an active link, and

if it is sending and receiving data.