Basic Printing Troubleshooting Steps - I still hate printing 

I have a couple of things I do. I work as a computer site technician for a school and take care of the largest school in my district just so we can have some context. I have about 35 network printers I take care of, and hundreds of staff I support. The first thing I do when I receive a call from the person who is unable to print is ask them which printer their trying to print to, I then ping it from my desk to make sure it is reachable, I then go to their location on campus and see if they've selected the correct printer. 75% of the time the end user is selecting the wrong printer or their selecting print to PDF even after I set their device to a default printer. It's more funny than frustrating, we laugh and move on. Other times it's the spooler, and things you said in the video. And a lot of the time newer techs will use windows generic print driver 😔, it works yes, however you should always go to that specific vendor and get their driver! This will save you headache if your end users require secure print. Just some tips!

More often than not you will be unable to delete the print job in print management, in that case you will have to stop the print spooler then navigate to C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete all the files there and then restart the spooler. Other issues is sometimes print drivers become corrupted and removing the printer will not resolve the issue as windows keeps that bad driver on hand. From a command prompt using the printui /s /t2 command will give you a dialog box where you can remove those drivers entirely.

Thanks! All of the above were true. A Stop/Restart of the spooler at the command prompt showed my printer what's what!

The first thing I always do when someone says they can't print is to have them shut the printer off, unplug it, and remove the network cable. Then I have them wait 15-20 seconds, plug in the network cable, plug in the printer, and turn it back on. Inevitably, this usually results in the printer spitting out whatever jobs are stuck in the queue.

Don't get toO deep into the troubleshooting at first. Try these steps in the video then go crazy on the drivers. Great video buddy.

Step one: Windows drivers are your enemy

we had once a customer who could not print from the server via RDS where he had a his ERP. Printing directly from his client worked fine. Eventualy we found out that the print driver on the server was not the same as the one installed on the client ...

I have huge experience in printer repairs, I know it’s mostly hard to troubleshoot printers because most of them are so sensitive, fault sing of a bad print head might be the same with sensor issues, logical board or mother board issues. I would love to be part of the program and am searching for a job. Am a Nigerian but currently in Ukraine, I’ve 8 years experience in all kinds of pos, printers, laser jet, photo printers, power packs etc

My mom has an issue with her printer, nothing in the queue but it goes to print and just stops. Never thought to look at the spooler in services, great idea!

Can you do a video on mapping a network printer?

Also I fixed mine by going to printer settings on laptop and removing the printer, and adding it back again. Printed perfect after that

I always say " I got 99 problems...and printers are all of them"

Print spool Wow, never would have found the answer without you THANKS!

Great video. Should do more like these. Yeah printers are a pain to work on. Can you do a video on remote desktop on windows 10 or if there Is better software to remote into PC's. Thanks

Dude 🤦🏿‍♂️😂... I had to pat myself on the back the other day tho, I fixed a printer issue all by myself, 😃 😂

another one (this one at home, wifi printer) I send the print job, and it takes 5-10 seconds for the printer head to do one pass from left to right and then the same in reverse. After trying everything I knew about, I had the idea of why not stick the ethernet cable in the laptop instead? Boom! oookeeeey, open browser, speed test: cabled connection upload speed 13 Mbps, wifi connection upload speed 0.4-0.5 Mbps ! whooa. So my wireless NIC is the issue. Downloaded the last driver from Intel and it fixed the damn upload speed. As a newbie, I felt particularly proud of this home troubleshooting.

What's annoying is most people who use printers don't actually have to.

Printers are the absolute worse calls I get. Installing and unistalling. Smh

I was looking for a video like this, thank you!

Hey there man i appreciate the video this is something i was looking for. Going to be getting into the hospital it field and going to need the basic knowledge of this to make sure i got the answer to many questions in there.

Its good you started showing practical aspect. Woohoooo, cowboy

I once saw the "Pen is stuck in printer" error and had to Google it...wasn't able to fix that one though.

If it's a network printer with a Jet direct box you will also want to power cycle the Jet direct box verify link light activity. Also is the Jet direct ethernet ports very loose or damaged as if they are loose, it can cause intermittent connectivity issues, the printer will ping all day but it will not print unless that Jet box has also been power cycled and ethernet cables are connected securely, if you have the network printers you if available have cups admin site where you can stop start, printer, clear que and or reprint jobs.

Learned a lot. Thanks. Simply and clear explanations.

Here because I got asked how to troubleshoot a printer in an interview and went completely blank with no idea what to say. Pretty sure I won't be getting that job. *sigh*...always hated learning about printers during my IT courses

Before anything I ask a lot about de behavior of the printer before and the experience of the user with it, you can determined in which way to go

That shirt 👕 is hilarious 👍

What if it the printer “offline” but light is still on?

Hello, my hp psc 1210 all in one wont print. Checked the print rollers and tried to reset. Won't print a test page and i tried to do it manually as well. Sounds like the motor is just humming. New ink cartridges and carrier moves freely. E is the code showing. Please assist.

I have an officejet 5600 HP it prints from my computer documents but not on the tray itself

thanks

Awesome video. Thanks.

Hi , thanks for great video. Very informative. One question: how to find out who delet printer on Print server ?

It makes my job harder and frustrating when i have 10 remote sites that i need to attend to and HQ and supporting about 800-1000 users in total and my company is an utter crap. I keep having users having connection issues with network printers, some i had to map directly with it's IP. and when i t/s for one user, problem will come back a few days later if not week later.

You are really helpful bro ❤️ Also your voice sounds like John Cena 😀

I was able to fix the "PC LOAD LETTER" error......true story!

How about the situation when user is unable to install the printer properly and PC don't detect it when plugged in, even when the driver is installed?

The out of ink light was on I changed the cartridge and the light is still on and the printer won't print. Help!

"probably because I threw it" I felt that

Good teaching

Thanks for the video, it helped a lot.

thanks for your help

Pretend you're bad at fixing printers or you'll be stuck doing it forever!

How would you handle printer is printing a number of the same job from an EMR and nothing is wrong on the queue? Would a vendor have to trouble shoot problems. Or a technician would have to assess?

awesome! thanks a lot for this!

Thank you!

How exactly can you and how did he get a printer in a virtual desktop?

My computer has my ink jet printer listed but the computer and printer are not connected. USB cord connecting printer and computer. If you would know the reason the two are not connected???

great video man

very helpful!!!

thank you so much! it helps a lot!! :) :)

literally every IT tech ik and watch hates printers and printer troubleshooting

What is the step by step process when my printer's troubleshooting

Is it ok to have a print server but what if the printer was just connected thru USB and then shared?

you are awesome bud

I have a brothers printer & a HP Envy 7640 printer. I cannot get anything to print to either one. It shows they are ready and they are both connected to my wifi and say connected. I keep getting error "cannot print your word document" Why? I have tried unplugging it, uninstalled it, reinstalled it. checked the paper trays, restarted the spool. Nothing works. HELP!

But what if other users are able to print fine. Print spooler keeps stopping.

Can you do scanners now 😭

Deskjet hp printer doesn't connect to network

What if I see this error message? /dev/lp0: printer on fire Do I need to go to the printer configuration or confligration? 😹🖨️🔥

It's already 2020 and printers still stuck. Drivers are still poorly optimized and unreliable.

I feel windows 10 is little difficult for me, Because I am not able to remove simple admin password, I know password but I can't able to remove. Do you know please help me. I do in windows 7 perfectly but windows 10 sucks.

Champion

🤦🏿‍♂️ printers lol

dude you are a LEGEND thank you :) (plz hire me jk but fr)

Oi boinaksuda.....al bl nobok.....muddat ah

1:13 to skip

1:12 3:42

What are you gonna do? Smash it into pieces again?

oh U hate ur job ... i kno the feeling

Please, for the love of God! Do not just unplug a printer or copier! Copiers and some printers have HDD's, not doing the proper shut down procedure can result in trashing that HDD. I have been a copier/printer technician for the last 7 years, and I have replaced too many HDD's because someone ripped the plug from the wall.

I fucking hate printers

I'm old, you talk to fast and can't catch up.

Need fixing on trouble shooting

Run Cmd, recipes? 😂 For real, you'd think they would be embarrassed to call help desk for a unofficial task 🖨️. Maybe they got scared important medical documents wouldn't print either once it was malfunctioning. How embarrassing. And really they woke you up. Kinda inconsiderate.