alexpgp | Back to the basics...

The past couple of times I tried to print to my venerable Brother laser printer, Windows reported the unit to be offline.

I ran all sorts of diagnostics, reinstalled the driver, and generally tore my hair out trying to figure out what was the matter.

Then (and it always seems to be "then," instead of the other way around, i.e., I do this stuff first) I recalled the hard-won lessons of my engineering days and proceeded to check the wiring and cabling in the setup.

The power cable? Check. The printer turned on with no problem.

The USB cable? Check. My computer made a suitable noise when I plugged the USB cable into it.

So what was the matter?

Eventually, I decided to unplug and replug the other end of the USB cable, on the printer's side.

When my fingers brushed the cable at the point where it was plugged into the printer, the cable came away with hardly any resistance at all. My computer made the noise that it does when a USB device is disconnected.

I plugged the USB cable into the printer. The computer recognized the connection of a USB device. I reran the printer diagnostic, and the unit was back online.

So it turns out that when one get around to checking the basic stuff (whether at the start or sometime after the start of a troubleshooting session), it's a good idea to throw all of one's assumptions out the window.

Cheers...