Even if your printer cabling matches the diagrams in your user guide, your printer may still display error messages on your screen warning you to check your connections. Resolving a situation in which a device acts as if it’s disconnected can entail looking for clues in both obvious places, such as your cabling, and in parts of your system that don’t appear to be potential culprits.
Cabling
The most straightforward printer issue is caused by faulty connections. Simply plugging a data cable into your printer and your computer, hub, switch, or router does not imply that the connection is functional. Even if you performed a digital autopsy with a wire stripper and a magnifying glass, the insulation covering a perfectly normal-looking USB or Ethernet net cable can conceal physical damage or defects. Replace your cable and see if your problems disappear. If they do, throw the faulty cable in with your recycling so it doesn’t end up back in – or, more accurately, out of – service.
Printer Driver
Many printer problems that appear to be unrelated to software are caused by faulty printer drivers. When the software that handles the processes that make document data understandable to output hardware fails, you may see half-printed files, bogus error messages, and pages with content that appears to have exploded. Modern operating systems include built-in support for a wide range of output devices, detect new printers when they are plugged in, and offer to locate appropriate drivers for them. These conveniences are useless if your software becomes corrupted due to malware or hard drive issues, or if it requires an update to remain compatible with an upgraded operating system. Examine your system for hardware and malware issues, and then go to the printer manufacturer’s website to download new drivers.
Hub
If you connect a USB printer through a hub, especially one that draws its power from the USB port on your computer rather than an electrical outlet, your system and output device may not see each other properly. While some devices, such as flash memory drives and media card readers, may work flawlessly when connected via a hub, not all printers will function properly without a direct connection to a port on your system. Try directly connecting your printer to your computer. If your issues go away, go through your USB devices to find another candidate to plug into the hub or remove when you need to print.
Other Considerations
Even if nothing goes wrong between the computer and the printer, the process of moving bits and bytes from one to the other can leave the output device with a bad taste in its mouth. If an application crashed while you were printing from it, or if your electrical power fluctuated enough to cause your lights to dim slightly and your monitor to blink off and on, shut down your printer and computer before restarting them. Power cycling clears memory buffers, flushing away stale data and malfunction byproducts.
