HP advertised their printers to be one of the best in the business.
But isn’t it frustrating to use your HP printer one day with no hitch, and the next day it won’t even print a single document.
When your HP printer is not printing properly, your first reaction will be to call their support team and hope that they’ll be kind enough to work with you in fixing your printer.
Unfortunately, most printer manufacturers only give their customers one year to enjoy free technical support. After that, you’ll have to pay to extend it or you’re on your own.
The good thing is our Printer Not Printing team will help you solve your HP printer problem without charging you any fee in getting your HP printer fixed.
First, we have to identify the reason why your wireless HP printer suddenly stops printing.
Why Is My HP Printer Not Printing?
Several different factors might stop your HP printer from printing properly. And most of them can be fixed without you sending your printer to your manufacturer’s service center.
Reasons Why My HP Printer Is Not Responding Or Working
Empty/Low Ink Levels. An issue caused by your ink cartridges is one of the most common reasons why your HP printer may stop printing documents. You can easily check if your ink levels are low if there is a blinking light on your HP printer’s ink indicator or you could manually check it on your printer display screen. If your ink cartridges are almost empty when you check it, you should replace them right away and that could fix your printer issue.
No Paper In Tray. HP printers usually indicate if you are out of paper by showing an error message on your printer display screen or if the roller starts working yet no paper comes out of your HP printer when you print or copy a document.
Paper Jam. Similar to the previous two reasons we mentioned, paper jam errors will show an error message on your printer display screen that will tell you that a jammed paper is inside your printer. Paper jam errors won’t allow you to print using your HP printer as long as there is jammed paper in your machine.
Ink Cartridge Error. Ink cartridge errors are often caused by defective ink cartridges or expired ink cartridges. Yes. Like edible food items, your ink cartridges have an expiration date too. Using defective or expired ink cartridges can cause errors in your HP printer that will prevent it from working properly.
Corrupted Printer Driver. Your HP printer driver acts as a bridge between your computer and your HP printer. It tells your HP printer the document you want to print and how you want it to look like on your printout. If the printer driver is corrupted, then you won’t be able to print any documents from your computer or laptop.
Wireless Connection Problem. If you have a wireless HP printer, then a problem with your wireless connection or network may stop your HP printer from printing even if you tried hitting print multiple times on your computer or mobile device. A good indication that there is a problem with your HP printer’s wireless connection is if you see a blinking blue light in front of your printer. This means it’s not connected to a WiFi router at all. No blinking light means the WiFi of your printer is turned off. An indication that your printer has a working wireless connection is a solid blue light.
HP Printer Not Printing Fix
Now that we’re able to distinguish the different causes that may cause your HP printer to stop printing documents, let’s go ahead and fix it using our guide.
Basic HP Printer Checkup
Before we start doing troubleshooting steps on your HP printer, let’s perform a basic printer checkup first.
Follow these instructions on how you can do a basic HP printer checkup.
- Turn on your HP printer.
- Check the display screen for any error messages, and make sure that all your display buttons are working properly.
- Place any single page document on your scanner glass.
- Select the copy button on your display screen to copy the document.
If you were able to copy your document successfully, then you can proceed to the basic troubleshooting steps below.
If you’re unable to make a copy, then you have a much bigger printer problem here and you should go ahead and proceed to the advanced troubleshooting steps.
Advanced Troubleshooting Steps To Fix Your HP Printer
Our advanced troubleshooting steps will check your HP printer’s software. It’s either your HP printer is not printing because of a wireless connection issue or a corrupted HP printer driver on your computer or laptop.
You may refer to each tab to check how you can fix your HP printer issue.
HP has different drivers for each printer model.
If this is the first time you are using or setting up your printer, make sure you are using the right printer driver for your HP printer model.
Now, if your HP printer suddenly stops printing documents from your computer, but you’re able to print before, you may try removing and reinstalling your HP printer driver.
Go in front of your computer or laptop screen, open your Control Panel to uninstall a program, which is your HP printer driver. Once uninstalled, restart your computer or laptop.
Now, once it’s done rebooting, go to the HP support website to download your HP printer driver.
After downloading your printer driver, you may set it up again on your computer or laptop. If set up properly, you should be able to print your document again using your HP printer.
Most HP printers are wireless printers that need a good working WiFi router to print documents from your computer.
If the wireless connection between your computer or laptop and printer is compromised, your HP printer won’t print.
You can easily fix your wireless connection issue by reconnecting your wireless HP printer back to your WiFi router.
When you’re in front of your printer’s display screen, click the wireless icon.
Once you’ve found it, it should show you your WiFi connection details like your IP address and MAC. We don’t need those, for now, so proceed in scrolling down and look for the word “setup”. Click on that and set up your wireless connection again by choosing your WiFi network name you’re also using on your computer and entering your WiFi password. It will indicate afterward if the connection is successful or not.
If you’re having a hard time connecting your HP printer to your WiFi network, check out our Printer Offline guide.
If the above steps did not fix your HP printer, the last attempt or final step you can do to make your HP printer work again is by doing a semi-full reset.
A semi-full reset, or the process of resetting your printer to its factory defaults, is going to reset your printer back to its original settings. It’s like you have a brand new printer again, except it’s already has been used by you and caused you headaches before.
Hopefully, by doing a semi-full reset on your HP printer, it will start working again.
Since there are various HP printers, you may have to refer to your printer model’s product manual for the instructions on how to do a semi-full reset or factory reset your HP printer.
If you don’t have your printer manual with you, you may download it directly from HP’s Support page.
HP Printer Maintenance Tips
Hopefully, those steps were able to fix your HP printer not printing problem. Now that we solved that problem. Here are some basic maintenance tips in keeping your HP printer in good condition and prevent printer issues from occurring on your HP printer.
- Use only HP genuine ink cartridges.
- Print your documents or photos using only compatible papers on your HP printer.
- Use your HP printer at least once a week. Avoid not using it for an extended time to prevent your ink cartridges from drying.
- Purchase a printer cover to block dust, debris, and other small particles from entering your machine. It’s an inexpensive item that can prolong your printer’s lifespan.
- Connect your HP printer directly to a wall outlet for it to function properly.
- Never leave empty ink cartridges inside your HP printer for too long to prevent damage on your printer’s printhead.
Frequently Asked Questions About HP Printers
The number of times you should clean your HP printer depends on how much you use it. If you’re using it daily, then simply checking if there is enough paper on your tray or covering it with a printer cover after using it will be great for your HP printer.
If you’re not using it that often, then you may have to do printhead cleaning every two weeks to ensure debris, dust, and air won’t get stuck in your ink cartridges are cause printer problems in the future. Of course, using a printer cover would lessen the time you have to clean your printer’s printhead.
Also, check your ink levels once a month to ensure that there are no ink cartridges with low ink levels. Using ink cartridges that are near empty might damage your printer in the long run, so it’s advisable to replace them right away.
The most common cause of your wireless HP not printing is its IP address might have changed. Your WiFi router gives unique IP addresses to each of your devices that are connected to it.
There may be times when your WiFi router gives your printer a new IP address and the IP address of your printer in your computer has not been changed. Meaning your computer is still connected to the old IP address of your printer. This will prevent your HP printer from printing any documents sent from your computer.
The best way to fix this is to remove and reinstall your printer driver to set up a brand new connection between the two devices.
Certain print jobs may get stuck in your printer queue if there is a problem with your HP printer’s driver or its wireless connection.
You must delete all pending print jobs first, before you can start printing documents again on your HP printer.
You can do this by going to your Devices and Printer window, and finding your HP printer icon and name. Once you’ve found your printer, right-click it with your mouse, and look for the option “see what’s printing”.
On the upper right corner of the new window that will open up, choose “Printer“, and select “Cancel All Documents“. This should delete all pending documents, and allow you to print again.
When an HP printer is on an error state, it may prevent you from printing any documents. Also, you won’t be able to navigate through your printer’s display screen.
Our team recommends doing a hard rest on your HP printer right away to see if that will fix the issue.
If the hard reset does not fix your HP printer issue, you’ll have to do a semi-full reset to restore your printer to its factory default or settings.
hey man, my HP OfficeJet 8022 is brand new, Ive set it all up, put all ink cartridges in correctly, but for some reason, the Cyan is not working….
how do i fix this ?
Hey Kingsley! Do you see any error message on your printer screen? If not, have you tried cleaning the cartridges using your printer’s control panel?
On my printer is a message: cannot print visit www. hpinstantink for information. This site did not help me. I did not use my printer because of the pandemic I had no reason to use it. Now that I need my printer instantink has blocked me. Why there is not a direct line for help?
Hi Gwendolyn,
Can you check if the cartridges have an Instant ink label on them? Also, if you need to talk to HP support about it, this will be the best phone number to reach them, 1-855-785-2777.
My print error reflects it will not print until I join instant ink. This arose as yellow ran out and I replaced the cartridge with an HP cartridge.
Have you subscribed to the HP Instant Ink plan already? If not, kindly check if there are any HP instant ink cartridges inside your printer.