Printer problems: faded or streaked prints, ghost images, toner not fused, paper jams, garbled print, stuck print queue, incorrect paper settings

Printer problems are frequent, but most have a small set of common causes. The trick is to match the symptom on the page to the part of the printing process that produced it. Knowing the laser imaging process of processing, charging, exposing, developing, transferring, fusing and cleaning helps you work out which component to check, and many symptoms apply to inkjets with their own causes. Faded prints on a laser printer usually mean low toner, toner density set too light or an economy or draft mode enabled; on an inkjet, low ink or clogged nozzles. Vertical streaks or lines on a laser printer often come from a scratched or dirty imaging drum, a dirty charge roller or debris in the paper path. A streak that repeats at regular intervals points to a roller, and the distance between marks can identify which roller. On an inkjet, streaks or missing colors are fixed by running the head cleaning routine, then print head alignment. Blank pages on a laser printer can mean the protective seal was left on a new toner cartridge.