CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [394]
Troubleshooting Dot-Matrix Printers
Impact printers require regular maintenance but will run forever as long as you’re diligent. Keep the platen (the roller or plate on which the pins impact) clean and the printhead clean with denatured alcohol. Be sure to lubricate gears and pulleys according to the manufacturer’s specifications. Never lubricate the printhead, however, because the lubricant will smear and stain the paper.
Bad-looking Text
White bars going through the text point to a dirty or damaged printhead. Try cleaning the printhead with a little denatured alcohol. If the problem persists, replace the printhead. Printheads for most printers are readily available from the manufacturer or from companies that rebuild them. If the characters look chopped off at the top or bottom, the printhead probably needs to be adjusted. Refer to the manufacturer’s instructions for proper adjustment.
Bad-looking Page
If the page is covered with dots and small smudges—the “pepper look”—the platen is dirty. Clean the platen with denatured alcohol. If the image is faded, and you know the ribbon is good, try adjusting the printhead closer to the platen. If the image is okay on one side of the paper but fades as you move to the other, the platen is out of adjustment. Platens are generally difficult to adjust, so your best plan is to take it to the manufacturer’s local warranty/repair center.
Troubleshooting Inkjet Printers
Inkjet printers are reliable devices that require little maintenance as long as they are used within their design parameters (high-use machines will require more intensive maintenance). Because of the low price of these printers, manufacturers know that people don’t want to spend a lot of money keeping them running. If you perform even the most basic maintenance tasks, they will soldier on for years without a whimper. Inkjets generally have built-in maintenance programs that you should run from time to time to keep your inkjet in good operating order.
Inkjet Printer Maintenance
Inkjet printers don’t get nearly as dirty as laser printers, and most manufacturers do not recommend periodic cleaning. Unless your manufacturer explicitly tells you to do so, don’t vacuum an inkjet. Inkjets generally do not have maintenance kits, but most inkjet printers come with extensive maintenance software (Figure 22-25). Usually, the hardest part of using this software is finding it in the first place. Look for an option in Printing Preferences, a selection on the Start menu, or an icon on your desktop. Don’t worry—it’s there!
When you first set up an inkjet printer, it normally instructs you to perform a routine to align the printheads properly, wherein you print out a page and select from sets of numbered lines. If this isn’t done, the print quality will show it, but the good news is that you can perform this procedure at any time. If a printer is moved or dropped or it’s just been working away untended for a while, it’s often worth running the alignment routine.
Figure 22-25 Inkjet printer maintenance screen
Inkjet Problems
Did I say that you never should clean an inkjet? Well, that may be true for the printer itself, but there is one part of your printer that will benefit from an occasional cleaning: the inkjet’s printer head nozzles. The nozzles are the tiny pipes that squirt the ink onto the paper. A common problem with inkjet printers is the tendency for the ink inside the nozzles to dry out when not used even for a relatively short time, blocking any ink from exiting. If your printer is telling Windows that it’s printing and it’s feeding paper through, but either nothing is coming out (usually the case if you’re just printing black text), or only certain colors are printing, the culprit