Brian vs. Printer

Spent a good chunk of my work day today on two issues; almost 3 hours. The first one was a printer issue and I am not sure that I’ve ever said this here but I hate printers. I hate them so much. Out of all the tech out there that I need to troubleshoot and repair, printers are at the bottom of my list. They’re fiddly, they all have their own unique interfaces and labels and functions so they’re not standarized like operating systems or computer hardware or phones, and they all have moving parts that are prone to malfunctioning and breakdown.

Oh wait I have said I hate printers, and recently. Apologies for my Swiss-cheese memory. That’s why I tried to buy the most boring and functional printer I could find.

This particular printer was in an office setting. It was an MFP which stands for Multi-Function Printer, which means it had a scanner and a fax machine built in. More fiddly parts that are prone to breakdown and malfunctioning, just what a printer needs. Bolting more abilities to something already full of potential for failure is a clear path to extra failure.

According to the customer, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, the printer was their main source for scanning documents, a key office function. It was working on Friday, and when it worked properly, it would scan a document and send the file, via email, to the selected user. The client said that they had been getting errors recently, but rebooting the printer usually cleared up the problem. Until today.

Reader I spent so much time on this. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, I was doing this all remotely. My boss believes in doing as much as possible remotely, because he charges customers extra if a tech has to come onsite. He charges for travel time and there’s a surcharge for onsite time. So I had the customer on the phone, and I was remoted in to their computer.

Let me try to shortcut what I did. I wanted to be methodical. My first task was to find out if there were any obvious errors. I was able to get into the web interface for the printer and there were no errors. The fact that I could see it over the network meant that it was, well, on the network. So that wasn’t the issue.

That all took me about 20 minutes, if my memory serves me right. It was a bit of slow going. But the next part was nearly an hour of trying different configurations of settings. Because this wasn’t strictly a printer issue. It was a network connectivity and email issue. I had to find the exact right combination of server, port, and authentication issues that would let this printer send an email. I had to dig through the printer settings (keeping in mind what I said above about how each printer manufacturer uses their own jargon for otherwise standard things), email server settings, and help documents from the printer manufactuer and the email provider, matching up things that were surprisingly differentiated.

Reader, I won. I managed to get it all sorted. And I documented it all for the next tech to come along. It just took me nearly an hour and a half.

Since I’m over my 500 word goal, I’ll save the other troubleshooting story for a separate post.