6 hours to fix a printer that just needed a firmware update, who else has been burned by the simple stuff?

So last Tuesday I'm setting up a used office printer for my side gig, an older HP LaserJet from Craigslist. It connects to wifi fine, drivers install fine, but every print job just sits in the queue with an error. I spend 3 hours messing with port settings, restarting the spooler, reinstalling drivers twice. Google gives me 47 forum threads, none match my exact issue. Finally I call HP support out of desperation and the guy asks 'did you update the firmware?' I hadn't. Took 10 minutes after that. So my question is: do you guys check firmware updates first when something weird happens, or are you like me and waste half a day on the obvious? And has anyone else had a fix that was stupidly simple after a long battle?

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robin_henderson811d ago

The "6 hours to fix a printer" line hit way too close to home. I mean, I once spent an entire Saturday angry at a router that just needed a power cycle after I'd already tried it twice. Sometimes the obvious fix feels too dumb to actually be the answer, ya know? My personal rule now is if I'm over an hour into something, I force myself to check for updates or restart the whole thing before I go down the rabbit hole again. It's like my brain refuses to accept that the simple stuff is usually the culprit.