About Fix a Printer: An Independent Printer Fix Guide

Fix a Printer is an independent website about one thing: getting a printer that has stopped working back to work. Every guide starts from a symptom you can see, such as a printer showing offline, a paper jam with no paper, blank pages or a driver error, and walks through the fixes in the order that solves most cases with the least effort.

Not affiliated with any printer brand

Fix a Printer is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by HP, Canon, Epson, Brother, Xerox, Lexmark, Ricoh, Kyocera, Samsung, Dell or any other printer or computer maker. Brand and product names appear on this site only to describe which printers a fix applies to. We do not sell printers, ink, repairs or support plans, and we do not run a phone line. If you need warranty service or a repair from the maker of your printer, find their contact details on the manufacturer’s own website by typing its address yourself.

What changed

This domain used to host a small site advertising printer repair and installation services. That site has been replaced by the step-by-step guides you see now. The old service pages redirect to the closest guide, so older links still work. Claims from the old site, such as round-the-clock service, same-day repairs, factory authorisation and a support phone number, no longer apply and have been removed.

How we write and check guides

• Focused on troubleshooting. We cover error states, connection problems, paper jams, print quality and drivers. First-time setup and buying advice are outside our scope.
• Current systems. Steps for Windows refer to Windows 11, and steps for Mac refer to current versions of macOS with System Settings. Menu names are checked against Microsoft and Apple documentation, which we link in the sources of each guide.
• Safe fixes only. We describe what you can safely do yourself and say clearly when a part has failed and needs repair. We never suggest opening power supplies or fusers.
• No invented numbers. We do not publish made-up statistics, prices or success rates.
• Dated. Each guide shows when it was last updated.

What the guides cover

The guides are grouped by what you see, so you can start from the symptom rather than the printer model:

• Offline and connection problems: printers that show offline, drop off Wi-Fi, are not found by Windows 11 or a Mac, or are connected by USB and not recognized.
• Paper jams and paper feeding: jams with and without paper, sheets that will not feed or feed several at once, skewed or wrinkled pages, and the order in which pages come out.
• Print quality: blank, faded, streaky or smudged pages, wrong colours, ghosting on laser printers, and dried-out ink.
• Errors and messages: spooler and driver errors, Windows error codes, the “error” and “paused” states, door and ink pad messages, printers that will not power on, and factory resets.

The printer troubleshooting guide lists every guide on one page, with a short note on when each one applies.

How to use a guide

Each guide starts with a short summary of the likely causes, then works through numbered steps from the quickest and safest check to the least likely cause. Stop as soon as the printer works. Where a step is different on Windows and on a Mac, both are described. Where menu names differ between printer models, we say so and describe where the option usually sits, because your printer’s manual has the exact wording for your model.

At the end of most guides you will find answers to common questions and the sources we checked, such as Microsoft and Apple documentation.

Languages

The most-read guides are also available in Spanish and French. Start from the printer troubleshooting guide, the guía de solución de problemas de impresora or the guide de dépannage imprimante.

Photos

Photos on this site are used under Creative Commons licences or are in the public domain, and each one is credited under the image. Where no suitable photo exists, pages use a simple generated illustration.

Contact

Spotted a step that no longer matches your screen, or a fix we should add? Use the contact page. We read every message, but we cannot provide one-to-one technical support.