I do some IT work and I was asked to take care of a few printers. Pretty basic, right?
Well, no… these printers are smarter than ever. The error messages are vague and I’m working with one that gives no notification other than there is an error.
I’m interested in software which allows me to run diagnostics on the printer and hopefully see what’s wrong. has anyone seen anything like this?
My Canon i450 inkjet came with software that helps maintain the printer. You can print test patterns, run routines that clean the cartridge heads, and whatnot. I don’t know if you’re working with inkjets, and whether that’s what you’re looking for.
What make and model and what are the symptoms?
Generally you have to work with whatever the manufacturer provides.
AFAIK, nothing like that exists. Printers aren’t very generic devices, each model sports different interfaces, functions, and control codes. You’ve really just got to work with what you have.
Almost all non-basic printers are capable of printing one or more detailed diagnostic pages. Depending on what’s up, I’d try that.
HP Web Jet Admin (WJA) might be of some help if you are using HP printers. It won’t decipher the various error codes (“49.FF”) but it will let you check printer status, jams, settings and so on (it will look at and set a wide variety of things) remotely. Quite handy for managing fleets of printers, keeping up to date with your firmware, running page usage reports, keeping tabs on toner, etc.