Common Printer Problems and How to Fix Them

August 12, 2016

Printers, copiers, scanners, and multifunctional units are designed for getting work done. However, like with any other piece of technology, you’re bound to run into printer problems from time to time. Printer problems can be toxic to a day’s work because they affect the productivity of everyone in the office.

In this article we’re going to identify some of the most common printer problems, which you’re probably already familiar with, and discuss what has to be done in order to fix them.

Paper Jams

There’s no doubt about it, the most common issue people run into with their machines is paper jams. These days, most machines are built to alleviate paper jams, but they still aren’t 100% jam-proof. There’s only so much a machine can do to eliminate paper jams, the rest is up to you.

Paper jams can occur if the drawers of your printer haven’t been adjusted properly. If the paper isn’t sitting nicely within the drawers, either because it is too big or too small, then you will get a jam every time. Ideally you want your paper to be snug, but not too snug. The paper tray should be set so that the paper cannot move easily back and forth when inside the machine. Another cause could be that the paper drawer is overloaded. Whomever put the paper in just put too much into the drawer because they did not want to do it for awhile.

Paper drawers are the first place we always check when we run into a paper jam. When people call us asking for help with this problem, the first place we ask them to check is their paper drawers. In many cases adjusting the drawers will solve your paper jam issues, but if that doesn’t solve the problem then we recommend checking to see if anything else is out of place. There may be a problem with the rollers, or another internal component, in which case a service call is needed. Call us, and we’ll have a technician sent to your office to either clean or replace the component that’s causing your printer problems.

Failure to Print

Another one of the mystifying printer problems people run into is when they go to print or copy a document and nothing happens. No paper jam, no nothing, just a complete failure to print. In a situation like that, the problem can often be solved by rebooting both the printer and the computer it is connected to. When you turn everything off then back on, the problem has a tendency to fix itself.

In the rare cases when a reboot doesn’t work, what you have is a job stuck in the queue that is freezing up the machine. Until you clear out the print queue and free up the memory, you won’t be able to print anything. The solution to this is to clear out the job that is causing the problem. It’s easy to identify which job is causing the problem because your printer will not be able to accept any new jobs until the problematic job is cleared. Worse case scenario, you may have to clear out all jobs in the queue before being able to print again

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