Repairing Common Printer Problems

Printer Cable:

One of the most common sources of printing problems is the printer cable. Normal wear and tear can damage one or more of the wires or pins in the connectors of your cable.

Cable problems simple to diagnose and correct. The fastest way to troubleshoot a cable with no obvious defects is to substitute a known good cable and see if the problem goes away. Or, you can place your questionable cable on a system that is having no problems, to see if your problems follow the cable.

Printer driver problems:

Another common printer problem is that your drivers are defective or out of date. You might even have the wrong one. This can result in all sorts of strange gibberish on the printed page. If you selected the wrong printer driver for the printer you are trying to use, you may need to purge the print jobs that are hung up in the spooler as well as reset the printer to remove any bad data that remains in its buffer.

It’s also possible that you have the correct printer driver but that it isn’t configured properly for the amount of RAM installed in your printer. If the driver is set for more RAM than the printer actually has, an overflow can occur. This might go unnoticed for a long time. It may appear only when you have a large print job or pages with lots of graphics...


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