Lessons · IT support · a printer that will not print

A printer that will not print: the queue, the panel, the wire, the spooler

A print job leaves the program, sits in the computer's queue, is handed to the spooler service, crosses the network to the printer, and is put on paper. A printer 'that will not print' has stopped at exactly one of those places, and the checks go from the cheapest to the most invasive: the printer's own panel, the queue, the printer's own test page, the network, the spooler.

Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.

What it is for

Half of all printer tickets are paper, toner, a lid open, or one job stuck at the front of the queue holding the other nine behind it. A technician who starts by reinstalling the driver spends twenty minutes and then finds the job stuck in the queue anyway. The panel and the queue are two minutes, and they are where the fault lives most of the time.

How to think about it

Panel first: on, no error, paper in, toner not empty. Queue second: any job in error at the front; cancel it. Test page from the printer's own menu: if that prints, the printer is fine and the fault is between the computer and it. Ping the printer's address from the computer. Restart the spooler. Only then the driver, and only if the test page from the printer worked and nothing else did.

Worked example

Panel: on, no error, paper and toner fine

Two minutes, and half the possible causes gone.

Queue on the user's machine: nine jobs, first one 'error, printing'

A stuck job at the front. Nothing behind it can move.

Cancel the stuck job: the next eight print

The cheapest change, and it was the fix. Nothing was reinstalled.

Note: 'job from a PDF stuck at head of queue; cancelled; eight jobs printed'

Named cause, named fix, verified by the jobs coming out. The article for this is three lines.

Your turn

The printer's own test page prints fine, but nothing from the user's machine arrives. Write the service to restart on the machine.

Restart the print  service

The trap

Reinstalling the driver as the first move. It is the most invasive check and the least likely cause, and it destroys the queue, which was where the evidence was.

Practise a printer that will not print on HoneA question on it now, a coding challenge where there is one, and it is remembered for review. Free, no email needed.