Handling Printing Problems 

• General
• About Print Queues and Printer Panel
• Printer Messages or Patron Printing Troubles
• “Stuck on Ready” Problem
• If all Printers are not Working

General:

In general, most kinds of printing troubles are handled by going to the patrons PC and helping them with papercut or basic printing. If not, then the printing problems are most likely handled at the printer directly.  

ON RARE OCCATIONS YOU MAY HAVE TO DELETE A PROBLEM JOB TO CONTINUE PRINTING

We don’t want to delete jobs people need so be careful and only delete jobs that are known problems.

For Example: A large and very slow printing job may back up too many other jobs for our system to handle. If you have a very slow printing job, say, 1 page every 45 seconds, look at the print queue to figure out and report the name(s) of the job(s) causing trouble. Then delete that job from the printer using the Printer Control Panel’s ‘Pause/Cancel’ button.

The color printer is an exception to this. The jobs take a long time to process for the color printer even if it a relatively small job. 

WATCH THE PRINT QUEUES DURING YOUR SHIFT

Check on the print queues every so often so you can prevent bigger troubles. When jobs in a queue have the status ‘Ready’ or ‘Printing’ while the printer is silent it means that printer needs help!

Occasionally a printer is stuck & print jobs get out of hand before any student reports it it to us. Like 30 or more jobs in the queue would be something to worry about. 

With each printer problem we want you to take an organized approach to decide how best to help the patrons and keep the printers going. We try not to have much down time for the printers.

*When you turn a printer off the jobs in the printers queue will resume printing once the printer is back online

NOTE: The printers always take around 4 minutes to fully reset so you should only shut it down in the specific instances outlined below. If you have to shut the printer down and have a line of patrons let them know so they will chill out

WHEN APPROACHING PRINTER PROBLEMS KEEP THESE 3 QUESTIONS IN MIND: 

• Is it a user error?
  • What does the printer panel say VS what the library patron is saying? (a patron may tell you that the printer is out of paper when that is not the case)
• Is it a printer error?
  • Are there any jobs in that print queue trying to print but nothing is coming out of the printer? (jobs have the status ‘Ready’ or ‘Printing’ and the printer just says ‘Ready’) 
• Is it a campus problem?
  • Are the other printers printing jobs for other users or do we have bigger problems than a single patron/printer? (see ‘If All Printers Are Not Working‘ below if none of the printers are printing) 

About the Printer Queues and the Printer Panel:

We keep a special printer folder on the desktop of the Tech Support PC. Inside the Printers folder shortcut you’ll find all the library printers. Double click a printer to pull up the printer queue. 

Open any one of the printer queues and you’ll see (list below) for every job in the queue.

• The name of the printer and its status along the top of the window, then below that:
  • Document Name
  • Status
  • Owner
  • Pages
  • Size
  • Submitted time/date

When a job status says ‘Printing’ or ‘Spooling’ the job is loading into the printer memory (size will increase until it is fully loaded) and will printing out. It should be a quick process. 

Keep an eye on the submitted times. If a job is sitting in a queue with a ‘Paused’ status for 3 hours (or more) submit a Tech Support Form so we can delete the old job from the queue. The old job will not harm anything but we dont want queues clogged with jobs that have not been released from PaperCut.

PRINT QUEUE JOB STATUSES

• Status Column:  statuses in the printer queue mean this:
  • Paused = The user has not released the print job with Papercut (Paused is the default status)
  • Ready = The job has been released and is in line waiting for the printer to be available
  • Printing/Spooling = Will only show briefly while printing or until the job has loaded into printer memory and then prints

NOTE: When watching the queue you may have to Refresh the View periodically to force the queue display to be up to the moment. (see image below)

Like this: 

PRINTER PANEL STAUSES (the screen on top of each printer)

• Messages on the printer panel and what they mean:
  • Paused = Someone pressed the Pause/Cancel icon and paused the printer. Press the Pause/Cancel icon on the printer panel again to un-pause the printer 
  • Ready = No print jobs being printed / not currently working on a print job.
    • If the queue says a job is “Ready” or “Printing” but the panel just says “Ready” this is a problem. see answer in section below
  • 49.XXX = The printer CPU has crashed. See problem section below for in depth explanation

Messages show in the message section. Press the “Warning/Error” icon to see the instructions to fix any errors.

 Printer Messages Or Patron Printing Troubles and what to do:

Problem: The printer says “Paused” on the printer panel

Do This: Push the Pause/Cancel  icon on the printer panel (the red X icon) and from there choose to Resume Printing

Problem: Patrons word or pdf document will not print correctly from the browser

Do This: You can try a different browser OR download the document to the desktop and open on the desktop application and print from there.

Problem: The patrons default printer on the PC they are using is down because of a paper jam or other printer issue

Do This: Currently the PCs only have one of the library Blk&Wht printers and the color printer available. Their default printer is set by whichever machine the PC is physically closest to. You cannot choose a different Blk&Wht printer so if their default printer will be down for a while the patron needs to go near a different printer and log onto a PC near that printer.   

Note: The color printer is NEVER the default. To print in color you always need to select the color printer from the list of printers in the print dialog box on whatever application you are printing from. 

Problem: Patron says the printer is out of paper. The panel says “Tray _ is out of paper” 

• First go to the patrons PC to help them print. Look for their job in the queues and see what printer they printed to and if they released the job in Papercut etc.
• If they did everything right then check the printer trays and see if it has any paper – if it doesn’t fill the tray, if it does try printing the job again from the patrons PC

Problem: Printer stops printing and says “Add Paper size _____ to tray 1”

Do This: Press the ‘Warning/Error’ icon on the Printer Panel then scroll down to the bottom of the instruction and press the OPTIONS button. From there select another tray to print from. We don’t ever use tray 1 on the big printers. Tray 1 is for custom printing only.

NOTE: Usually, when this error occurs the patron doesn’t realize that the job they are printing is asking for custom paper to print on. If the patron does have special paper they need to print on then they have to use the Quick Print Station on PC #76. We don’t support  custom jobs in color or paper that is wider than 8.5 inches anywhere in the library. 

Problem: Printer Jam message  

Do This: Look for Jams in all possible locations that don’t require you to turn off the printer as per these instructions:
Big Printers: https://library2023.newpaltz.edu/techpages/manageprinters.html#clearjams
Color Printer: https://library2023.newpaltz.edu/techpages/colorprinter.html#Jams
 

If nothing fixes the recurring jams and the tech staff are not around – power off the printer and put an “Out of Order” sign clearly on the top of the printer, in a plastic sign holder and turn the printer off. Then make sure you report this on the Library Tech Help Form.

When you put an “Out of Order” sign on a printer and turn it off it does not remove the printer from the public PCs. There is nothing you can do to remove the printer from the PCs and stop students from printing to that printer. You will need to direct students to a PC closer to another printer and print to the new printer from there.   

Problem:  Patron says the printer is not printing BUT the Printer Panel says “Ready” and the jobs in the queue all have the status “Paused”

Do This: Go to the patron’s station & show them how to release the job print in papercut

Problem: Stuck on status “Printing” or printing each page verrrrrry slowly 

Do This: If the printer is printing one page per minute or says “Printing” on the panel but prints nothing – look at the printer queue, find the job that has the status “Printing”, and write down the name of that job and the owner – in case that person comes to the tech desk saying they have a printer problem. Then go to the printer panel and press the Pause/Cancel icon and choose Cancel Job from there. Only hit the Cancel Job icon one time to delete the one job causing the issue.

Problem: Printer panel says “Ready” but not printing

If the queue is backing up, the printer is not printing, and the panel just says “Ready”.

Do This: 

• Power the printer off and wait 30 seconds and power it back on.
• If the panel has the error “Press OK to print last page” that means the printer may be “Stuck on Ready”. (check the “Monitor Print Queues to Prevent Stuck on Ready” problem for the solution and detailed instructions)
• OR If all the other printers are not printing the jobs in their queues we have bigger problems. (see “If All Printers Are Not Working”)

Problem: Library guest user says they cant print

Do This: Library guests are set to print to the guest user account papercut. They need to go to the circulation desk and pay to release their print job. Circulation will release the job in papercut at the front desk. 

Problem: 49.XXX Service error on a Printer Panel OR the panel is crashed and does not respond when you press the buttons

This message means a defective or corrupted PDF document is causing the printer’s little brain to crash.
Do This:

• Look at the printer queue and find the job that has the status “Printing” – write down the name of that job and the owner.
• Then turn the printer off and back on again. Stay with the printer while it comes on
• As soon as the printer is finished warming up, press the Pause/Cancel button. Then select Cancel Job to delete the problematic job. 

If the printer begins printing normally again the error has been fixed

Also, start watching the queues for the print job name you wrote down. This same print job could be part of an assignment and might pop up on other printers. If you see this error again with the same print job name report it on the Library Tech Help Form.  

Problem: Any other Printer Panel error not listed here

If the printer has an unusual error on the printer panel that does not involve a jam.
Do This:

• Power it off wait 10 seconds power it on. If it is not fixed after restart, get library tech staff assistance if we are here. If not, – power off the printer and put an “Out of Order” sign clearly on top of the printer, in a plastic holder. Make sure you submit a Library Tech Help Form.

Monitoring Print Queues to Prevent ‘Stuck on Ready’ Problem:

Sometimes  printer memory can’t keep up & just stops accepting jobs from the queue but it does not report an error. We call this the “Stuck on Ready” problem because the printer panel says “Ready” but does not print waiting jobs. When it happens it usually happens multiple times in a row.

If the panel has the error “Press OK to print last page” when it is supposed to be printing a job that also means the printer may be “Stuck on Ready”. 

The only way to fix it is to delete the print job from the queue and power the printer off and back on. 

First Do This:

• Look at the printer queue and find the job that has the status “Printing” – write down the name of that job and the owner.
• Then turn the printer off and back on. Stay with the printer while it comes on. 
  • If the printer panel says ‘Press check mark and print final page’ follow that prompt first then power the printer off
• As soon as the printer is finished warming up, press the Pause/Cancel button. Then select Cancel Job to delete the problematic job.

If the printer begins printing normally again the error has been fixed

If the printer is still stuck once it comes back online use the Library Tech Help Form to put in a ticket so Tech Staff can take care of it quickly. 

We can catch this error ahead of time if you are watching the printer queues. If you see a job do this:

• The printer queue has a job that says ‘Ready’
• The job will show an increasing number of megabytes being loaded into memory VS total size of the job in the size column. 
  • Like this: 48.0 MB / 91.3 MB
• Then suddenly the number will stop increasing and revert to a smaller number of KB 

Example:
Printing Fine in this example: printed job size increasing normally.

But THEN Stuck : Job not done and size suddenly drops to a small number of KB

​

If all Printers are not Working:

If you notice NONE of the printers are printing even though they have print jobs in their queues that have the status ‘Printing’. Then there are things we need to find out:

1. Is it a campus wide printing system problem?
2. How long will it be down?
3. Is it a downed campus network or just the print server?

WHAT TO DO:

First go to the tech office to get Tech Support Staff if they are in. You will work through the problem together. 

If no one is in the office: 

1. Test the network from your PC

• Test if you can get to a campus web page like the library web page.
• Test if you can get to an off campus web page like Google.

2. Call the Service Desk, ext. 4357 & ask them:

Explain the situation and ask if they have any information about an outage. If so:

• Do they know how long it will last?
• Are any other services affected? (i.e. my.newpaltz.edu, brightspace)

If not:

• Let them know all library printers are down and it is not a printer error
• Tell them whether you can or cannot connect to campus webpages (library page, my.newpaltz page, newpaltz homepage)
• Tell them if you can connect to off campus sites 

They will tell you what steps they will be taking from there.

3. You may have to make an announcement to the library patrons!

• Make the announcement loud enough so they can be heard and sound professional. Ask a circulation manager to make an announcement over the speaker system.
• Tell them what the problem is, that campus is working on as a solution, if you have a time frame, what they can do (if anything).

Example:

“Excuse me everyone. The campus printing system (and/or networks) is down but they are working on it. It may be back up in one hour. Please be sure to save all your work so you can print it later. “

4. You may have to make simple informative signs

If the outage is expected to take a long time you may need to place signs out for the public that we don’t have pre-made. If you have to, use as few words as possible. Make the words big enough to fill the page and be clear. 

Examples: “Library/Campus printing is currently down” or “Campus network is currently down”

Always submit a Tech Support Ticket if campus is having network issues that effect the library and none of the Tech Staff is in the building. This way tech will be aware.