It printed fine last week. Today it won't print a thing.
No machine in the house gets fussed at more than the printer. When one quits overnight, the cause is nearly always the same: something on the home network moved, and the printer didn't move with it.
It's $39 to book a visit at your house, and that $39 comes off the visit's price. A remote session runs 30 minutes for $39. Cards only, and the rate is settled with you before any work begins.
Nobody touched it. Here's what changed anyway.
It got a new address on the network. Most home routers lend out addresses that run out after a while. When a spring thunderstorm flickers the power or the router restarts, the printer can come back on a different address while your computer keeps looking for it at the old one.
The router or the internet company changed. The Wi-Fi has a new name now, and the printer keeps looking for a network that's gone.
An update swapped the driver. Windows especially will sometimes replace a printer's working driver with a plain generic one while it updates.
The printer list has filled up with copies. There are three or four entries with nearly the same name, and the one your computer uses by default is a dud.
Ink plans, and knowing when to let it go
Off-brand ink is usually fine. The thing to watch is a printer sold with an ink plan: some of them stop printing once the plan lapses, even with full cartridges inside. If yours quit all at once and there's a plan attached, look at the plan before anything else.
Some printers aren't worth another hour. If yours is older than about six years, needs a whole new set of cartridges priced above a new printer, or has begun eating paper, your Local Nerd will say so plainly and won't spend your hour propping it up.
Shopping for a new one? Ask us before you buy. There are a few models we'd never install for a customer.
Worth a try on your own
Give these about ten minutes. Now and then one of them clears it up completely, and you won't need a visit at all.
- Pull the printer's plug out of the wall, count to thirty, then plug it back in. Pressing the power button isn't the same thing. Plenty of times, that's all it needed.
- Look at the print queue on the computer. One stuck job from days ago holds up everything behind it. Cancel everything sitting in the queue, then print again.
- Open your list of printers and see how many are there. If you find several with nearly the same name, remove all of them, then add the printer one time.
- Use the printer's own buttons or screen to print a test page. If that comes out, the printer itself is healthy, and the trouble is on the computer or network side.
- Make sure the printer and the computer are on the same Wi-Fi. In a bigger house with mesh Wi-Fi or a guest network, it's common to find the laptop on one network and the printer on the other.
What a Local Nerd won't take on
Hardware repair, meaning anything that calls for new parts or a soldering iron. It's better you hear that before you book.
- Printer hardware repair isn't something we do: rollers, print heads, stripped gears. If the printer itself has given out we'll let you know, and for a home printer that usually means buying a new one.
- We don't run cable through walls for a wired printer.
What you pay
A visit at your house takes $39 to book, and that $39 is subtracted from what the visit costs. The hourly rate depends on how far your address sits, in a straight line, from downtown of the city it falls under: $110 an hour inside 25 miles, $130 an hour from 25 to 50 miles, and $145 an hour from 50 to 75 miles. Nothing is added on top for travel.
A remote session begins with us calling you at the time you chose, and it is $39 for 30 minutes. For help a few times a year, there is Nerd on Call: $14.99 a month, with two remote sessions and one in-person visit included every year.
Payment is by card. Local Nerds can't take cash or checks, so nobody will ask you for either at the door. The FAQ has the rest of the detail.
Want to talk it over first? A Local Nerd will call you at no charge, and you aren't signing up for anything.
Where Local Nerds come to you
A visit can reach as far as 75 miles from downtown of each Texas city with a page below, and every one of those pages lists the towns it reaches. To see what your own address gets, put it in the ZIP checker. Remote sessions don't depend on where you live.
- Amarillo
- Austin
- Beaumont
- College Station
- Conroe
- Corpus Christi
- Dallas
- Denton
- El Paso
- Fort Worth
- Frisco
- Houston
- Katy
- Killeen
- Laredo
- Longview
- Lubbock
- McAllen
- Midland
- San Antonio
- Tyler
- Waco
- Wichita Falls
Questions we hear a lot
The printer says it's connected. Why won't anything print?
Most of the time the computer is sending to an address the printer gave up. Pull the printer's plug for thirty seconds, then plug it in again, empty the print queue, and make sure you aren't sending to one of the duplicate printers in your list.
We switched internet companies and now the printer won't work. Why?
It's looking for a Wi-Fi network that no longer exists. It has to be put on the new one, and then added again on every computer, phone and tablet in the house that prints to it. That second step is the one that usually gets skipped.
Is off-brand ink okay to use?
Usually. The exception is a printer sold with an ink subscription: some won't print once the plan lapses, no matter what's in the cartridges. If yours stopped cold and there's a plan attached, check on the plan before you buy any ink.
Should I fix my printer or buy a new one?
Older than about six years, needing new cartridges that together cost more than a replacement, or starting to chew up paper: then it's probably time to replace it. We'll tell you that at the start rather than spend an hour coaxing it along.
Can I print from my phone or iPad?
Yes, once it's set up, and that's worth doing while your Local Nerd is there. It works well, and most households never had it turned on.
Can you fix a printer without a visit?
Often. Most printer trouble lives on the computer rather than in the printer, so a remote session handles a lot of it. A visit makes sense when the printer has to be moved, put back on Wi-Fi using its own buttons, or swapped for a new one.