About printers, almost every computer has one. Printers cause almost as many problems as computers and probably more. While my remarks will apply to most printers, I will address HP printers in this blog because they seem to be more numerous.
HP has made a lot of money on their printers and probably more money on print cartridges. Many do not know but HP charges for support after the one year when the warranty runs out. I repair an average on one printer every two weeks and sometimes more often and so I know about HP support. Don’t bother calling them because it will cost you and they won’t guarantee that they will fix your printer.
Printer repairs include paper jams, print heads failure, paper not feeding, printer alignment, installation failures, and network printer errors. Printers can also fail due to related computer errors such registry errors, corrupted files, malware, disk errors, spooling errors, etc, etc. The errors are endless.
Most printer repairs are, however, related to a network printer because they are more things that can go wrong with a network printer. At least these are the ones that I get calls on. Everyone seems to have a home network and its printer is a network printer.
A network printer has to have an IP address on the home network. In fact every device on the network has an IP address. What is an IP address? It is a unique string of numbers separated by periods that identifies each device showing where it lives on the internet. The device needs to have this address to communicate on the Internet.
The key here is that the IP address of the printer has to match its IP address in the computer.
Sometimes, the computer loses the IP address with the printer. How can this be? One reason is that the router is setup to work with what is called is DHCP which changes the IP address. If this is the case, it needs to be changed.
If you feel you want to fix the problem yourself, the best way is to download the HP Print and Scan Doctor which will find the IP address and fix the connection. This will work in most cases except when this program will not fix it. By the way when it does not work, you will not get an error code to help you. It simply fails.
Any repair will require that you know the SSID or the name of your network and its password.
Quick fixes to repair printers include running the HP driver software and see if reinstalling the driver will work. Another fix is finding the IP address in the printer and manually installing it in the computer.
A useful tool to help your repair is the embedded web page called the EWS. Not all printers have this but HP printers do. To access this page, simply put the IP address of the printer in your web browser. You IP address will begin with these digits: 192.168.xxx.xxx. This page can confirm the printer status, printer cartridges, network connection status and other printer settings.
The embedded web page actually resides on the printer in the firmware. Thus, you can change settings and repair your printer. But be careful, you can kill your repair by changing the wrong settings.
On a final note is that you can find the printer’s IP address on the configuration page on the printer. Find the printer report on the printer and print it. Actually it will print it even if the printer is not connected or not working.
Looking for professional printer repair?
Call Perry’s Computer Repair if you get too frustrated. 443-783-2269.
