Diagnosis And Repair

There is a fair amount of information on fixing printer errors that you will see. Finding printer problems involves a fairly involved process to define and deduce these errors. Below is a table to explains each step in the process, and why you should perform the steps in that order;

Step	Description	Reason
Check The Vitals	Is the printer turned on? Is it plugged in? Is the ready light on? Does it have paper? Does it have ink/toner?	Most often the simplest solution to a problem turns out to be right. Check the absolute most obvious things, and often you'll find the problem without having to go through a ton of steps.
Clear Paper Path	Remove all paper from the printer and place it back in. Remove any paper jammed in the pathway.	Sometimes the rubber can not grab a sheet of paper properly if the paper is inserted improperly into the printer. Also, you may find out paper is jammed by removing all the excess paper, or find the paper tray was stuffed too full. Lastly, little bits of paper that get in the printing path cause poor print quality and jam ink nozzles.
Check The Drivers	Make sure that the drivers for the printer are installed, and that the computer can communicate with the printer. (i.e. Print a test page.)	The drivers tell the computer how to react to the printer. There must be drivers loaded for the printer to work. Re-installing drivers can often eliminate problems like gibberish printing.
Check The Spool	Click the printer icon to make sure that the printing process isn't paused. Delete any unnecessary print jobs, and re-send the print request.	The print spooler handles making sure only one document goes to the printer at a time. If the print spooler gets paused, all documents after the paused documents will not print.
Check The Port Settings	Make sure that if the printer is on LPT1, the driver is set to LPT1. Make sure in Device Manager that LPT1 is installed and functioning correctly.	LPT ports rarely go bad, and most often the drivers will pick up the right port right away. Still, on the off chance that someone messed with some settings they shouldn't have, it never hurts to check.
Check the Cable	Make sure you're using a 25 wire Bi-directional printer cable that is appropriate length for the LPT port. (No more than 15 feet)	Every printer made in the last 5 years requires a bi-directional printer cable. (IEEE 1284) This allows not only the computer to talk to the printer, but the printer to talk to the computer. Cables over 15 feet degrade signals and cause data errors.
Check The BIOS	Check the printer requirements for Port settings, and set the appropriate setting in the BIOS.	Although most printers can use SPP, EPP, or ECP print settings, some older printers are not compatible with these formats. Ensure you are on the right setting for your printer.

So the printer looks okay, but it's on this funky connection that doesn't go straight into the computer. How do you deal with this? The first thing you MUST be able to do is identify a computer that is on a network, and then understand how to deal with that computer. (You don't need to know everything about networking, just enough to identify simple problems.)

The easiest way to tell a network computer is the interface. All network computers have one of three devices installed; A NIC, a modem, or a Wireless NIC. The first two have cables that attach directly to a card on the motherboard or ISA/PCI bus. A wireless NIC has an antenna coming from either the Monitor, or a PCMCIA card installed in a slot on the computer.

Once you've identified a computer is on a network, there are several precautions you must take. The first is to find out what kind of network the computer is on. Disconnecting a network cable from a Token Ring network or disconnecting a server can bring down the entire network. Star and Mesh networks can usually have a single computer removed from the system without any problems, but you should try to keep the computer connected unless you know for certain or there is no other way.

The most common software problems that occur when dealing with networks are listed in the table below with a couple quick descriptions;

Problem	Solution
Can't Connect To The Network	This could be dozens of problems. On the software side, it could mean that the protocols or services needed by this computer are not installed. It could mean duplicate addressing of a NIC or computer. You should let a qualified network admin handle these types of problems. (And peek over his shoulder to watch what he does.)
Can't Connect To Another Computer	Although this could be a problem from above, it's also possible that it could be a mis-matched password and/or user name. Check to make sure the user name and password are typed in correctly on both computers.
Can't Print To Network Printer	Along with what it listed up above for printer problems, there is another situation that can occur. This is when a printer is part of a network, and not directly connected to the computer. You must make sure that the network form of the drivers are installed in order to solve this problem. Some printers do not come with network drivers, so you must download drivers from the manufacturer that are specifically for this installation.
Can Not Access Files On A Remote Computer	In order for you to gain access to files on another computer, that computer must "Share" them with you. Make sure that sharing is enabled on the remote computer, and that your user account has permission to use that shared drive.