When a printer is not printing, the cause is almost always one of five things — the printer is off, out of paper or showing an error; a stuck job is blocking the print queue; the computer has the printer set to offline or is talking to it on the wrong network; the driver needs reinstalling; or, if pages come out blank or missing a colour, the ink or toner is empty or the printhead is clogged. Work in that order: turn the printer off and unplug it for 30 seconds, check paper, ink and error lights, then on Windows open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, open the print queue and cancel everything in it, restart the Print Spooler service, and make sure the printer is on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer and not set to Use Printer Offline. That short sequence, which is also the core of Microsoft’s own printer troubleshooting, clears the majority of cases where a printer is not printing at all.

Start with the printer itself

Before touching any computer setting, look at the machine. Is it on? Does its screen or an error light say anything — out of paper, paper jam, door open, low ink? A printer showing an error state will ignore every job the computer sends, and no queue fix changes that. Microsoft’s printer guide makes the same point: a “printer in error state” message means the problem is the printer itself, starting with low paper or low ink.

Then power-cycle it properly: turn it off, unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in and turn it on. Microsoft’s offline-printer guide gives exactly this as step one for a printer that will not respond, because a restart clears temporary faults in the printer’s own software. While it restarts, check the obvious physical things: paper actually loaded and seated, no jammed sheet half-fed, ink or toner cartridges clicked into place, and — for a USB printer — the cable firmly in at both ends.

Why is my printer offline?

“Offline” is the single most common form of printer not printing, and it means one specific thing: the printer may be on and healthy, but your computer cannot currently talk to it. Work through Microsoft’s offline sequence:

  1. Same network. A Wi-Fi printer and your computer must be on the same Wi-Fi network. A printer still joined to an old router, a guest network, or the 2.4 GHz band listed under a different network name than your computer’s will show as offline. Check the network name on the printer’s own screen or network settings, and compare it with the network your computer is on.
  2. Set it as the default printer. In Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, select your printer and set it as default. Windows can otherwise send jobs to a remembered printer that no longer exists — a frequent cause of “nothing prints and nothing looks wrong.”
  3. Clear the queue. Still in Printers & scanners, select the printer and choose Open print queue. If jobs are listed, cancel them all — Microsoft’s steps use the ellipsis (…) menu and Cancel all. One corrupt job at the front blocks every job behind it.
  4. Restart the Print Spooler. Search for Services, open it, find Print Spooler, right-click it and choose Restart. The spooler is the Windows service that manages the queue; restarting it clears stalls the queue window alone cannot.
  5. Check the offline setting itself. Open the print queue window and make sure Use Printer Offline is not ticked in its printer menu. This single leftover tick keeps a perfectly connected printer marked offline, and it survives restarts.
  6. Remove and reinstall the printer. If it still shows offline, remove the printer in Printers & scanners and add it again. Re-adding rebuilds the connection and the port Windows uses to reach it.

HP’s troubleshooting hub describes the same offline causes from the maker’s side — Wi-Fi dropout, a changed IP address, an outdated driver — and suggests restarting printer, router and computer in that order when the connection itself is in doubt. Restarting the router belongs in this list too: a wireless printer whose router has given it a new address can sit offline until everything has renegotiated.

The print queue is stuck and nothing moves

Sometimes the printer is online, the job leaves the app — and then sits in the queue forever, with every later job queued behind it. This is its own fault with its own fix, set out in Microsoft’s guide to print jobs stuck in the queue:

  1. Open the print queue (Printers & scanners > your printer > Open print queue) and cancel every job.
  2. Restart the Print Spooler service, as above.
  3. If jobs will not cancel, clear the spool folder by hand: stop the Print Spooler service in Services, open the folder %WINDIR%\system32\spool\PRINTERS, delete the files inside it, then start the Print Spooler service again and set it to Automatic.
  4. Restart both PC and printer — Microsoft’s version waits at least 60 seconds with the printer off before turning it back on.

Send one small test job afterwards, not the original document. If a plain test page prints, the queue is healthy and the original document itself may have been the corrupt job; try printing it again, or from a different app.

Printing blank pages

A printer that feeds paper, sounds busy and produces a completely blank page is not suffering a connection fault — it received the job and tried. The problem is that no ink or toner reached the paper. HP’s hub lists the causes plainly: an empty cartridge, protective tape left on a new cartridge, or a clogged printhead.

Check them in this order. First, ink or toner levels — read them in the printer’s software or the maker’s app rather than guessing, and replace anything empty. Second, if a cartridge was recently changed, take it out and look for the protective tape or seal that covers the nozzle or vent; a new cartridge with its tape on prints nothing at all, and this catches people constantly. Reseat each cartridge firmly until it clicks. Third, run the printer’s own cleaning cycle — in the printer’s maintenance or tools settings, or the maker’s app — then print a test page. Inkjet nozzles clog with dried ink when a printer sits unused, and HP notes you may need two or three cleaning cycles after a long idle period, testing between each one rather than running them blindly. Cleaning uses ink, so stop once the test page is right.

On a laser printer there is no printhead to clean; blank pages there point at an empty or faulty toner cartridge, or a cartridge whose sealing strip was never pulled. The cartridge maker’s own instructions for your model govern — do not shake toner cartridges over the machine or open them up.

Printer not printing black, or not printing in colour

When most of a page prints but one colour is missing — text faint or absent while colour images print, or a colour missing from photos — that one ink channel is the problem. The diagnostic that separates the causes is the nozzle check: a test pattern the printer prints itself, showing each colour separately. Canon’s support guidance builds its whole blank-and-wrong-colour routine around it: print the nozzle check pattern, and read which colour is missing or broken in the pattern.

  • If the missing colour’s pattern is broken or absent, check that colour’s cartridge level, then run a print head cleaning and print the pattern again. Canon’s sequence is specific: if cleaning twice does not restore it, run the deeper cleaning; if that still fails, turn the printer off, wait 24 hours, and run the deep cleaning once more — and if the pattern is still wrong after that, Canon says the print head may be damaged and it becomes a service matter, not another cleaning.
  • If the nozzle check prints perfectly, the printer hardware is fine and the cause is a setting. Check the print settings for a grayscale or black-only option left on — that is the usual reason a printer “won’t print in colour” while its colour ink is full — and check that the paper type setting matches the paper loaded, which affects how ink is laid down.
  • “Not printing but has ink” usually resolves into one of these two: ink present but nozzles clogged (the nozzle check shows it), or a cartridge the printer has not recognised — reseating it, as in the blank-pages section, is the first move.

Do not keep running cleaning cycles endlessly. Each one pushes ink through the nozzles, drains cartridges, and fills the printer’s waste-ink system; if two cleanings and one deep cleaning have not moved the pattern, the maker’s own guidance has already told you the next step is service.

Mac, drivers, and when to reinstall

On a Mac the shape is the same with different names: check the printer’s error state, open the print queue from Printers & Scanners in System Settings, cancel stuck jobs, and remove and re-add the printer if it shows offline. The “Use Printer Offline” tick and the spooler service are Windows-specific; the same-network check, the queue check and the remove-and-re-add are not.

Drivers are the last step, not the first. If the printer worked and stopped, a driver reinstall rarely needs to come before the queue, network and offline checks above. Where it does belong: a printer newly set up that has never printed, printing that broke straight after a major system update, or a printer that disappears from the list entirely. Get the driver from the printer maker’s own support site for your exact model — HP, Epson, Canon and Brother all publish them there — never from a driver-download site. On Windows, Microsoft’s fuller fix in its connection guide ends with the same sequence given above: clear and reset the spooler, then remove and reinstall the printer with the maker’s current driver.

Finally, the test that splits every remaining case in two: print a test page from the printer’s own panel or its own software, with the computer not involved. If the printer’s own test page fails, the fault is in the printer — supplies, printhead or hardware — and the maker’s support is the right next step; if you contact them, a photo of the error and the test page helps, and how to screenshot on Mac or how to screenshot on Windows covers capturing the queue error to send alongside. If the printer’s own test page prints fine and only computer jobs fail, the fault is on the computer side — queue, driver, network or the wrong default printer — and the sections above contain it.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my printer not printing but has ink? Most often clogged nozzles or an unrecognised cartridge, not an empty one. Print the printer’s nozzle check pattern: gaps in one colour mean a clog to clean; a perfect pattern means a setting or the computer side is at fault. Reseating the cartridge fixes the unrecognised case.

Why does my printer say offline when it is on? Because the computer cannot reach it — they are on different Wi-Fi networks, a stuck queue or spooler has stalled the connection, the Use Printer Offline option is ticked, or the router has moved the printer to a new address. Power-cycle the printer, confirm the same network on both, clear the queue, restart the Print Spooler, and untick Use Printer Offline.

Why is my printer printing blank pages with new ink? Check the new cartridge first: its protective tape or seal stops all ink flow if left on. Then reseat it until it clicks, check the level the printer itself reports, and run a cleaning cycle — a printer that sat idle while the old cartridge ran out often has clogged nozzles as well.

Why won’t my printer print in colour? Either one colour’s nozzles are clogged or empty — the nozzle check pattern shows which — or a grayscale / black-only setting is switched on in the print settings. If the nozzle check prints all colours correctly, it is the setting.

Should I reinstall my printer’s driver first? No. Driver problems are real but they are not the most common cause, and reinstalling takes longest. Power, error state, queue, spooler, offline setting and same-network checks come first; reinstall — from the maker’s site, for your exact model — when those fail or the printer has never printed at all.

This article is general information, based on the printer support guidance published by Microsoft, HP and Canon and checked in November 2026. Maintenance menus and cartridge designs differ between models — where a step names a menu your printer does not have, follow the same-named tool in your maker’s help for your model.