Why Doesn’t It Work?

Neither of my roommates are exactly tech savvy, so every time they have a computer issue, they immediately come to me in hopes that I can fix it for them. I don’t mind it at all since I’m not actually putting my Information Technology degree to any other good use. And most of the time I can figured out whatever is wrong and show them how to fix it and TA DA! They’ve learned something new.

However, the other night my roommate B came and told me she was having a problem printing to the printer that she shares with our other roommate BW. The document indicated that it had been sent to the printer, but nothing ever actually printed. B had never been able to connect wirelessly to the printer like BW, so she was actually tethered to it via the USB cable. And obviously when you’re directly attached to something, its really hard to understand why it doesn’t work.

I decided to try and help out, so my first task was to try turning the printer off and back on again. When that didn’t work I went on to my list of usual problems… I checked for a jam, unplugged the USB cable from her laptop and plugged it back in, tried disconnecting from the printer and connecting again. Then I got frustrated… I reinstalled the printer software on her computer, I searched online for a free printer driver download which might help fix it.

By this time about an hour had passed and I still could not figure out what was wrong. I was about ready to throw the stupid thing out the window. So I moved the printer to grab a piece of paper that had fallen behind it and suddenly realized what the problem was… Even though the USB cable was securely plugged into B’s laptop didn’t mean it was securely plugged into the printer…

It worked fine after that…