Basic Printer Troubleshooting

Printer troubleshooting can be challenging, given all the different types of printers available on the market.
Here are a few issues I've had to resolve many times for my customers. Hopefully, they will help to resolve any printer issues with which you are wrestling.
When you send a print job, a network printer asks you to put paper in the manual feed tray, even though your document doesn't require manual feed.
This is a printer driver issue. To fix it:
Go into the printer's menu, and reset it to the factory defaults.
Delete the old driver from the server. Install the correct driver (For HP printers, this will be the PCL5 CE version).
In the printer driver device dialog box, enable any special hardware installations such as an envelope feeder or duplexer.
Go to each computer that has access to that printer. Delete the old printer from the computer's printer and faxes listing, and install the printer again so that the new driver is downloaded.
You have an HP LaserJet printer that jams every time a job is sent to Tray 2, but you can't find any paper jam when you pull the tray or the toner cartridge out.
This is a "timing" issue. The tray is not raising the paper to the height of the paper rollers. This is one of those printer troubleshooting questions that's tough to fix without seeing the printer, but I'll give it a shot. Try this:
Pull the tray out. On the bottom, there may be a "switch" that allows the tray to raise properly. This switch is supposed to get "tripped" when you push the tray in, but sometimes that doesn't happen.
Trip the switch and put the tray back in. It should print fine now.
Note: If there's no switch on bottom of the tray, you might have a electrical problem where the printer doesn't "sense" that the paper is at the right level. Check with your local printer repair company.
A network printer works fine for a day, and then the next day it stops printing.
This is most likely an IP addressing issue. If you are on a TCP/IP network, the printer must have a static IP address assigned to it. If it is set to get an address via DHCP, the port will stop working when the IP address changes each time the IP address lease expires.
Secondly, make sure the rights to access the printer have not changed.
You have a printer connected to a single computer and it won't print.
Check the following:
Printer cable is plugged in to both the PC and printer.
Printer is on and set to Ready status (not offline).
Printer has paper and toner.
The printer is set as the default printer in Printers and Faxes.
Check your computer disk space. If there isn't enough space for the print job to spool, it won't print.
See if you can print from a different application. If you can, the problem is with the application that won't print.
Try printing from a notepad.exe file. If it doesn't print, delete the printer driver and reinstall it.
Documents don't print completely, or come out garbled.
This happens usually because the driver installed for the printer is either corrupted or is not the right driver.Verify you are using the correct driver. If so, reinstall the printer driver on the computer.
As I think of (or run into) more printer troubleshooting issues, I'll add them to this page, so keep checking back!