Troubleshooting your printer

Last Updated on June 16, 2020 by Christian Ralph

My printer won’t print

There are several reasons why your printer might not be printing. You can start by checking for any error message on your printer or whether the warning light is showing. You should also make sure there is paper in your printer, that your ink or toner cartridges are full and that your printer is either physically or wirelessly connected to your computer.

Another, less obvious reason your printer might not print is that you may have old printer software still installed on your computer. Make sure that your present machine is currently set as your default printer and that any previous software is removed from your computer.

Finally, if you’re still having no luck after trying the above, you should get in touch with the manufacturer of your machine. Either visit the website, or call the customer service line and speak to an expert.

My prints are spotty or have lines on them

If your prints are coming out with coloured spots or lines on them, you may have a blocked print head. This usually happens when your inkjet printer is used infrequently as your print head can become clogged with dried ink. Your printer should have its own utility program which can clean out the dried ink, and you should make sure to print out a test page to ensure that all the ink has been cleared.

It can be confusing to locate and access your printer’s utility program as it varies by printer brand, but it can be easily accessed from devices paired to it. From your computer, access your ‘Control Panel’ and your printer’s utility application should be there.

My printer is too slow

As long as your printer’s software is fully up to date, your machine should run at its optimal speed. However, there are some hacks you can apply to speed up your printing and improve the overall performance of your machine.

Laser printers are renowned for their speed and are much faster than inkjet printers so if speed is your main priority, you might benefit from upgrading to a laser printer model.

If you’re looking for speed, you may have to compromise on other areas of printing such as quality. For example, if you print your documents in ‘draft mode’ you can print a lot faster at a lower resolution. This is fine if you’re just printing internal documents, however if you’re looking to create formal reports or client documents, you should make sure to switch your printing back to quality mode.

My photo quality is bad

When we print our images, we print in DPI or Dot Per Inches. To make sure that your photos are printed in the highest DPI resolution possible, you should set your printer to a higher print quality than normal. You can also try adjusting the type of paper you’re using and printing photos on high quality photo paper instead of plain paper.

My printer is printing the wrong colours

If you’ve recently changed your ink or toner cartridges, there may be a problem with your installation which could be causing your machine to print paperwork with the wrong colours.

Remove the inks one by one and double check they have been installed into their correct slots. Alongside this, if you’re using consumables that aren’t made for your printer (e.g. using an unbranded ink cartridge in your Xerox machine), this could also be causing an issue.

A clogged print head can also cause this problem, so you should run your printer utility app to clean the print head and then print a test page to make sure the issue has been resolved.

As you can see, there is always a solution to the issue your facing with your printer. If our blog post hasn’t helped you to solve your problem, please contact a member of our expert team and we’ll be happy to give you advice on your printer.