Can't print from. Why the printer is not working: causes and solutions. Cartridge and paper problem

Often, office equipment users face a problem related to the fact that the network printer does not work. To solve it, we need to consider two different cases. In the first case, you really have a network device installed and connected, for example, via Ethernet, in the second, you have a regular printing MFP that is connected via a USB cable and, in turn, shared access settings have been made for it.

In order for the network printer to start working normally again, carefully read the following guidelines. If they do not help, then it is worth calling the master to the house or a friend who is more experienced in matters relating to office equipment.

First case: network printer

If your device is connected to a public network, but when you try to send certain documents for printing, an error constantly appears on the screen, then first of all you need to look at its current IP address in the settings of the printing device. You can learn more about how to do this in this article:.

In the next step, you should check the availability of this network address on the PC from which the printing process is not in progress. For this purpose, press the key combination Win + R, then enter "CMD" in the window that opens called "Run the program." Press the enter key. In the black command line that appears, you need to enter “ping” and, after a space, the IP address of the device, then press “Enter”. In the event that you are "pinging", then continue the configuration by going to the next steps described below. Otherwise, check the status of the patch cord with which the device and PC are connected to the network. But it's best to get the print working again by creating a new patch cord.

Check the settings of office equipment that is connected to your PC, if your ping continues to "go".

• For this purpose, open the section with devices and printers.
• Find the icon and name of your device and right-click on it to open its menu. Among the drop-down list, click on "Printer properties" (in the English version of the OS: "Printer properties").
• Click on the ports tab and select "Add port".
• Now a new window should open in front of you, where you need to click on the “Standard TCP / IP port”, and then click on the button that implies adding a new port.
• Now you have to set the IP address, and the one that you set or looked at on the network MFP. Having solved this small task, click on "Next".
• After the settings are made, the printing device should connect to the PC. Those. the computer will start to see it and you just have to make a test print to make sure that the problem when the computer does not see the network printer is solved successfully.

Second case: regular printer

If a regular printer does not print, although it is connected to a PC via a USB cable and configured as "shared", then follow all the recommendations below:

• First, make sure that you are printing from a personal computer, to which, in turn, your printer is connected. For example, try reconnecting the USB cable to a different port. Also check if the selected device is set as the default device and if the offline mode is enabled. Also, make sure that printing is not paused. All this can be viewed in the properties of the device.
• If such actions did not help and the problem associated with the fact that the network printer does not print still remains unresolved, then check the availability of the PC to which the printing device is connected from the computer on which you need to print certain documents. You can do this by typing "ping" into the command line - a similar action was described in the first section of this article.
• The next step is to check your device's sharing settings. To do this, open its properties and open the access tab. Find there an item called "Sharing" and check the box next to it, then set the network name - you can choose any, the main thing is that later everyone will understand what kind of device it is. To save your changes, click on "OK".

If the printer is still not visible to the computer, then try:

1. Go to the "Devices and Printers" section and select the item that allows you to add new printing equipment.
2. Click on install and wait for the system to complete the search. From the list of devices, select the one you need and click on "Next".
3. In the event that the driver installed on the PC to which the printing device is connected is suitable, a window will open in front of you, where you will be asked if you trust this printer. If the special software is not suitable, then you need to either specify the path for installing the corresponding driver device model or install it in advance.
4. In the end, you just need to specify a name if necessary and click on "Next".
5. Thus, the printer has been successfully installed and is now ready for use.

Hi all! If you have visited this article, then, for sure, you are having problems with the printer and you are interested in the question “Why does the printer not print?” I will try to help you with this. Of course, the benefit of a printing device is difficult to overestimate. It is needed everywhere: at home and in the office, at school and at the factory. In a word, in the era of information technology, this device is needed almost everywhere, since it greatly facilitates the work. You can also read an article about, and sometimes you may also have.

Problems with the printing device do not depend on its type (laser, matrix, inkjet, sublimation) or on the manufacturer. Even well-known brands such as Canon, HP, Epson or Samsung do not guarantee that there will be no breakdowns or problems with their printers. So, if the printer does not want to print from the computer, then do the following:

1. Check the device itself. That is, print a test page by pressing the corresponding button on the printer. If it doesn't work, check the paper, make sure the cartridge is installed correctly, and try again. Pay attention to the indicator: it should be green. Does not help? Go ahead.
2. Check power wire, its contact with the printer. If the test page prints, but the data does not print from the computer, then you need to adjust the settings in the system.
3. First, check the cable contact in the printer and in the system unit. Now observe the monitor screen when you send documents for printing. If nothing happens, check if there is a "bird" in the dispatcher, next to the item " Pause printing»?

"A printer" - " Clear print queue».

If all else fails, then the device must be removed. Right-click on the Printer icon and select Uninstall. After that, disconnect the USB cable from the system unit and restart the computer.

After turning on the computer, plug the USB cable into another port. A window pops up in front of you on the screen. Installation Wizard". If yes, then the printer is set to mode. If the window does not appear, then open it manually: "Start" - "Settings" - " Printers and faxes».

If the printer does not work, then the problem may be in the drivers.

Open the printer properties: "Start" - "Settings" - " Printers and faxes", right-click and select " Properties». Next, open the "Advanced" tab and select a different driver. Or completely remove this device. Then turn off the PC and unplug the USB cable. Next, restart the computer and start the printer, but plug the cord into a different connector.

A window should appear Installation Wizard”, in it you need to specify the location of the drivers. If nothing happened and the window did not pop up, then the drivers will need to be installed manually. Read more article. In a situation where the printer is not detected by the computer at all (i.e. the device is connected and visible to the system, but Windows does not detect its model), then follow the route:

Go to " device Manager" and open the line " IEEE 1284.4 compatible printers" or "IEEE 1284.4 devices". Then update the driver by right-clicking the desired one.

If nothing helps and the question "Why does the printer not print?" it remains open for you, then you have to contact the service center. Tell me, do you have a good Internet connection? Write about it in the comments or read the article. I look forward to your comments on the article! All the best!

With uv. Evgeny Kryzhanovsky

Let's consider the most typical problems.

Checking the health of the USB cable and ports

All modern printers are connected to the computer using a USB cable. If you connected the printer to the port on the front panel of the system unit, then try connecting it to the connector on the rear panel. They, as a rule, are soldered directly into the motherboard, which eliminates the possibility of a malfunction of the cable used to connect the USB ports to the front panel. It can also happen that the main cable is broken, with which the printer is connected. In this case, the system will not see it at all, or, when the cord is moved, it will find and lose the device. In this case, you will need to replace the USB cable.

Wrong printer selection when sending to print

This problem most often occurs when there are multiple printers on the system. (Connected both directly and through the network).

As a rule, the program that is used for printing uses the printer marked in the system by default. You can do it in two ways:

1. Before each print, select the desired device.

If you do not see the required printer in the list of devices, then proceed to the next step.

Missing or incorrect device driver installed

To check if the driver is installed, go to Device Manager. You can do this by holding down the Win + Pause / Break buttons at the same time or by opening the properties of the My Computer shortcut. In the left part of the window, click on the link "Device Manager" and look for the branch "Imaging devices" or "Printers and Faxes".

If your printer is not here, or you notice an exclamation mark next to it, then the driver is not installed, does not work properly, is not compatible with your OS version, or simply failed.

Download the latest driver from the manufacturer's website.

Print process stuck

Many documents may be queued for printing and cannot be sent to the printer. To check for frozen documents, go to the "Devices and Printers" subcategory in the control panel, open the menu of connected equipment, and select the "View print queue" item. Cancel printing of all documents and restart the process.

Before going deep into the system settings, you need to make sure that the printer itself is in good condition and does not show any error on the display. The causes of the malfunction may be paper jams, empty cartridges and other problems, the solution of which is described by manufacturers in the user manual. In some cases, it is enough to completely pull out the USB cable and insert it back.

Good afternoon Dear readers and guests of the blog site, probably the most common problem in the daily life of a system administrator or an ordinary user is the situation that printer is not printing from a computer running Windows. Such situations are solved in different ways, and in this article I would like to analyze the most common and effective methods that will help you fix this problem and help you teach the user to diagnose and solve it himself, without distracting you from more important work.

Why is it not printing

There can be a lot of answers to this question, I will try to make a small checklist by which you can find what suits you.

• Your print service (Spooler) is stuck. A fairly common problem in operating systems of the Windows family, and everything was solved by restarting the desired service.
• The print queue is stuck. Each printer has a certain amount of memory, and if you send a document that is too thick for it to print, it may freeze completely, everything is cured by canceling the current print and clearing the queue, more on that below
• Your printer is in exclusive mode
• Printer printing is temporarily suspended
• Problem with drivers
• The problem with the device itself

Algorithm of actions if the printer is not printing

And so why the print does not go to the printer, I described to you, let's now do the algorithm of actions.

Right-click on the desired printer, make sure that your printer does not have a ghostly label, as in my screenshot, here you can immediately understand that the printer is not printing due to its offline operation. In the context menu, select the "Print Queue" item and on the "Printer" menu tab, make sure that two checkboxes are not checked:

• Pause printing
• Work autonomously

If they are set, then you will not be able to send documents for printing, they will hang in the queue, but nothing will go further.

Please note that as soon as the printer ceased to be offline, it immediately changed the label to its normal color, which means that it became operational.

5. If this did not help, then I advise you to diagnose it with built-in tools, I already wrote about this method in an article when the printer did not work in Windows 10.

6. Reinstalling drivers, such actions may be required when, for example, you updated your Windows 10 to a new release, and your printer may not be supported in it or require reinstalling drivers.

Another of the saving sticks when a document is not printed to the printer is to use the Print-Spooler-Repair-Tool utility, which will automatically conduct a deep diagnosis of your system and try to fix all possible printing problems. Open the utility, preferably as an administrator, so that Windows UAC does not work. Press the "Repair" button for diagnostics

All printer owners sooner or later face a problem when the printer refuses to print for some unknown reason. It either simply does not respond to the print command in any way, or it starts working and immediately stops. If this happened to you, do not rush to get upset and carry your printer in for repair. In most cases, the aforementioned malfunction is not the result of a serious breakdown and can be corrected by the user himself.

The main reasons why the printer does not print

There may be several reasons why the printer does not print, and they are all quite simple. Of course, this list does not include such obvious reasons as the machine not being connected to the mains and computer, or there is no paper in the printer tray.

• Paper jam. This happens quite often, especially when it comes to frequent use of the printer and large volumes of printing. The first step is to inspect the printer: see if a jammed sheet of paper is visible and if the paper jam indicator on the printer is blinking. If you can grab some of the jammed paper with your hands, try gently pulling it out. If paper is jammed inside the printer, open the back cover of the machine and carefully remove the sheet. We recommend that you remove the cartridges or the photoconductor before removing the paper. It is also common for jams to occur in the paper feed tray.
• Out of paint. When the printer runs out of ink, it either prints blank sheets or stops printing altogether, depending on the design. To find out the amount of ink left in the printer, you need to go to the Windows control panel and open the section Devices and printers. It is worth considering that Windows may not always correctly determine the amount of ink, so it is preferable to play it safe and inspect the cartridge. Better yet, install a CISS (continuous ink supply system), thanks to which it is very convenient to monitor the level of ink.
• Wrong printer selected. Sometimes it happens that in the print settings of a text editor, the printer that is connected to the computer is not selected at all. Most often this happens after reinstalling or restoring the operating system. In this case, you need to go to the program settings and in the section Seal correctly specify the printer.
• Print queue stuck. This is a very common problem and the solution is to clear the print queue. How to get rid of a stuck print queue can be found in.
• Driver failure. Driver problems are another common reason why a printer won't print. To determine if the printer driver has crashed, go to the Windows Control Panel in device Manager and look for yellow or red exclamation points in the printers section. If there are any, then you will have to reinstall the driver. This can be done either from the disk, or in other ways, which are discussed in.

Printer prints in stripes

Another "popular" problem is when the printer prints in stripes. If this happens with a laser printer, then the reason is obvious - the device simply runs out of toner and needs to be changed. However, when you urgently need to print a few more pages, you can resort to a little trick - remove the cartridge from the printer and give it a little shake (be careful not to get dirty). After that, the printer will be able to print normally for some time.

In the case when an inkjet printer prints in stripes, the list of problems is not limited to running out of ink. In inkjet printers, it is quite common for the print head nozzles to become clogged. To fix this problem, you need to go to the printer management window and run the automatic cartridge cleaning function.

Also, an inkjet printer may print in stripes due to a cable failure or damage to the print head. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to fix such problems on your own, so if they occur, it is best to contact a service center.

Do you have any questions? - We will answer them for FREE