Just go through all the steps, one by one carefully and hopefully you will get the answer.
1. Is it beeping at you? Most printers will beep once or twice during or after initialization. If it beeps more than that or beeps constantly, the poor thing is either hurt or trying to tell you something is wrong. Look in the manual or go to the web site to learn what it is saying. Unfortunately, beep code documentation can be hard to find, the beep you hear may not listed, or the meaning of the beep is nebulous. Most, printers will beep when out of paper or out of ink and those are the most common causes for a printer turning into a road runner.
2. Does it test-print? Most printers have a built-in diagnostics program which can be very useful for troubleshooting problems and test-printing without a computer. They are usually initiated by pressing a button or two while turning on the printer. Check your user manual. If the printer test-prints OK, you have probably eliminated the mechanical print mechanism as the problem.
3. Does it have ink or toner? Is the Ink cartridge full, ribbon installed correctly, or laser cartridge full? An ink jet printer may have a black and a color cartridge. Check both of them or at least set the printer to use a cartridge with ink in it. You can usually extend the life of a laser cartridge long enough to order a new one by removing the cartridge and gently shaking it side-to-side to redistribute the tone. Sometimes you can get a ribbon going temporally by removing from the printer and manually advancing the ribbon past a worn spot by turning the sprockets.
4. Is it clean? Most ink jet printers have a simple user procedure for cleaning the print heads. You may have to clean them periodically or after the printer has been idle for a few days or weeks. If you see funny colors or print-outs are missing colors, a cartridge may be empty or a head dirty. You may have to clean a head many times to get it working again.
Does it have paper? Be sure the paper is installed correctly and there is enough of it. Most printers have a paper-out detector. On most dot matrix printers it is a photo diode. If form-fed paper is not aligned correctly (usually on the left side) the diode won't see it. DOS may indicate it has lost communications with a printer which is out of paper instead issuing a paper-out error.
5. Is it jammed? Paper jams are frequently the reason my wife is able to fix many printers. She's very good at it (and she has smaller fingers than mine). Always read the manual on how to clear a jam. Don't be a "gorilla" with your printer! You can easily damage a printer (strip gear threads, etc.), or even get hurt, if you do not follow instructions and are not careful. Turn the power off--unplug it. You have 110 volts running around the inside many printers. And print heads, gears, etc. like to nip fingers.
Laser printers have some very fine wires to remove static charges from the paper near the fuser mechanism which will break if you aren't very careful. Also, the fuser itself can be very hot (it fuses/melts toner to the paper).
Don't move a print head unless the instructions direct it. You can damage the belt, etc.
Address labels cause many paper jams and cannot always be seen. The old shirt cardboard trick can be used to dislodge them from many printers. Just feed a shirt cardboard (or cut a piece of like-sized cardboard form a file folder) through like a sheet of paper and wiggle the label loose and out.
Staples, paperclips, dog hair, and cookie crumbs are among the many things we have coaxed out of printers. A staple will raise havoc with the drum in laser printers. If you see vertical lines on pages printed by a laser printer (or copy machine), the drum is probably scratched. Replacing it can be a very expensive repair, indeed.
If jams persist, or the printer won't feed paper, there is a good chance that gears are stripped or rollers are worn-down or have flat spots. Fixing this sort of problem may require specialized tools and elaborate alignment procedures and is often best done at a printer repair depot. It is not usually economically feasible to send low-end ink jet and dot matrix printers, etc. to a repair depot. Sometimes roller problems can be fixed by cleaning the rollers.
Changing to a different kind of paper may help. Refer to your user manual for guidance.
On humid days, slightly damp paper can cause jams by sticking together causing more than one sheet to be fed at a time. Try removing the paper from its tray, etc. and fanning it. Make sure the edges or corners aren't curled and the tray is either not too empty or too full. Read the book...
Then there are those printers which no one can figure-out how to dissemble without damaging them...
6. Is it wedged? The printer memory could be full or there may my a glitch caused by a power spike. Turn-off the printer, wait a few seconds and turn it back on.
7. Does the printer port have a software security device on it? These devices attach to the printer port and the printer cable attaches to the device. They can break. Try printing without it.
8. Is the printer port configured correctly in your computer's BIOS Setup? Try the various printer modes in your computer's CMOS Setup. ECP+EPP usually works with bi-directional printers, but others may fix the problem.
9. Is it set-up properly? Be sure Windows is set-up correctly with the correct printer driver and something else (another printer, FAX, etc.) is not assigned LPT1: Be sure the printer is set as the default Windows printer. Try it on another desktop computer. If that works, try another printer on the suspect computer. Uninstalling and reinstalling the printer often fixes problems. Get rid of duplicate printers.
10. Does it have a stuck print queue? Start>Settings>Printers>double click the printer> Printer>Purge Print Documents
11. Have you used Windows Help to solve the problem?
