7.6.4 Printer Troubleshooting

Your laser printer prints a vertical black line on every page. You changed the toner cartridge but the problem does not go away. What is the most likely problem?

A corona wire is dirty. Explanation If a corona wire is dirty, it might not create a uniform charge. As a result, the toner might not be attracted correctly to the photosensitive drum or paper. A vertical stripe is a typical symptom of this problem. Be careful when cleaning a corona wire because they are delicate.

You replaced the print cartridge on an inkjet printer. What should you do next?

Calibrate the printer. Explanation After replacing print cartridges, perform a calibration. The calibration uses the self test to check the printed image and make minor adjustments automatically. Calibration will help avoid blurry text, misalignment (jagged lines), or incorrect colours. Dot matrix printers use a ribbon, and should be replaced if printer images become faint. Fuser roller assemblies are found in laser printers, and should be replaced or cleaned if there are lines or splotches at regular intervals on the print job.

When you print from your laser printer, the paper contains faint images from previous printouts. Which components should you check?

Discharge lamp Rubber scraper Explanation After a page is printed, a rubber removes any remaining toner from the OPC drum. A discharge lamp removes any remaining electrical charge. If images from previous print jobs show up on the page, check these two components. The primary corona charges the drum prior to writing the image. The secondary corona charges the paper to attract the toner. If these two components are faulty, the current image might have streaks or missing parts. If the toner is not sticking to the paper, check the transfer roller.

A user has created a complex spreadsheet on her workstation containing many graphs and charts. She sent the document to an older network laser printer that is shared by everyone in her department. When she picked up the output only the top half of each page was printed and the bottom half was blank. What should you do?

Install additional memory in the printer. Explanation If only part of a page printed on a laser printer (and the rest of the page is blank), you most likely need to add memory in the printer. This is especially true if it happens when complex graphical documents are printed, but printing works correctly with text-only documents. In rare circumstances, updating the printer driver could also fix the issue, but this is unlikely. The speed of the network link does not affect the quality of the printer output.

Which of the following is a symptom of a dirty drum or roller in a laser printer?

Lines or splotches repeated at regular intervals on the print job. Explanation A dirty drum of roller can create lines or splotches at regular intervals on the print job.

A departmental manager complains that print jobs are not being printed on the private laser printer in her office. The printer connects directly to her workstation with a USB cable. When you inspect the printer, you see no output displayed on the printer's LCD control panel. You notice that the printer's power switch is set to the ON position and that the printer is plugged into the wall outlet. What should you do?

Replace the printer's power supply. Explanation The fact that the printer is plugged in and powered on, but has nothing displayed on its built-in control panel indicates that its power supply has probably failed. this can be verified by listening for fan noises or feeling for heat being radiated by the printer. If the power supply is bad, then running a self test, connecting the printer to the network, or replacing the fuser assembly will not resolve the issue.

You have a laser printer that has worked fine until today. Now whenever anything is printed, only blank pages come out. Which part are you most likely to replace?

Transfer corona Explanation A blank page from a laser printer could be caused by a completely empty toner cartridge (which is rare), or a faulty transfer corona. The transfer corona charges the paper to attract the toner. Without a charge, the toner will not stick to the paper. The discharge lamp removes any charge from the drum prior to writing a new image. A faulty discharge lamp will show ghosted images from previous printouts. The static eliminator strip removes the static charge from the paper after the image has been applied to the paper. A faulty drum will result in sports or stripes on the printout.

A customer has called to complain that the colours in photos she has printed on the colour inkjet printer you store sold her don't match the colours in the originals. Assuming the customer is using a Windows workstation, what should you do to resolve the issue?

Use the Colour Management tab of the printer diver to calibrate the driver's colour settings. Download and install the latest printer drivers. Explanation You should download and install the latest printer driver, then use the Colour Management tab to adjust the driver's colour settings. Many times, installing the latest driver alone will fix colour issues. If not, you can manually adjust the colour settings until they match the original.

For the past several days, the print jobs from the inkjet printer are missing colours and leaving gaps. What should you do to resolve the problem?

Use the automatic print head cleaning feature. Explanation Use an inkjet's automatic cleaning feature if letter have missing lines and there are gaps. With inkjet printers, the nozzles sometimes become clogged, preventing ink from leaving the nozzles and reaching the paper. On dot matrix printers, you should check the gap between the printer head and the paper to avoid printer images from becoming faint. Colour profiles are typically created by the manufacturer, and correct problems when the printed colours don't match what you see on the screen. Add memory to a printer if the end of a printed page is missing.

You are testing a printer you just installed, so you use the operator panel on the printer to print a test page. Later, you use the printer properties on your computer to print a test page. Instead of a normal test page, you receive several pages with garbled characters on them. What is the most likely cause of the problem?

Wrong print drive. Explanation When you print a test page from your computer and it does not work properly, you most likely have an incorrect print driver or a printer cable that is not fastened properly. Memory or power supply problems are rare in printers. You would probably not be able to install an incorrect toner cartridge into the printer.