Computer help! I need the kindness of DU'ers!

[Raven]

We had terrible thunderstorms here this morning. One bolt of lightening seemed to hit very close and knocked out the electricity for a few seconds. My computer is fine and my internet connections and e-mail are fine but my HP 2210 printer seems to be dead. By the way I have one of those surge protectors on all this stuff.

I uninstalled and then reinstalled the software per the instructions and the printer is still dead. Is there anything else that I should do before I take this machine in for repair...or maybe a funeral...?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! :-)

[trof]

1. If you haven't already

shut everything down, kill all power, count slowly to 10, and turn it all back on again.

[notadmblnd]

5. Might need to buy a new power supply,

Its what happened to my hpg85xi. Is there a little black box attached to the cord that plugs in the wall? You can go to the manufacturers website and look up the part number and order one. Mine was $79. Radio shack carries them too and they might be cheaper. Just take the old one with you when you go.

[Raven]

6. Wheeeeee!!! That did it!

Lights flashing and everything! Thank you so much! :*

[TrogL]

2. define "dead"

are there any power lights? does it make any noises?

[kcwayne]

3. Try this...

If the printer does not power on, check around the back near the power cord to see if you have a fuse or a breaker switch. Not all printers have them.

If the printer does power on, see if you can do a test print from the printer buttons. (again, not all printers have this function, and it is different for every model)

If the printer can print a test page, the problem, might be the serial/USB/parallel port on your computer. If you have extra ports, try connecting the printer to the extra port. If you do not, try connecting the printer to another computer. This will isolate whether the problem is on your printer or on your computer.

If the problem is on your computer, you can buy a PCI Parallel port card to put in your computer to replace the bad port (which I am assuming is on the main board (motherboard) of your computer.

Good luck

[Styles]

4. one potential thing

try pulling out the printer cable and reinserting it... if it is USB, while the computer is on, anything else, be sure to turn both the printer and computer off before doing it...

That failing... even the best surge protector has it's limits... one good lightning strike and they fry too, worse yet is that they keep working when they are fried, so there is no way to really tell without some background electronics experience.

Good luck..

[Raven]

7. You folks are wonderful!

Trof had the solution but I am going to save this post for the next time. Thanks everybody! :hi:

[trof]

8. You're quite welcome.

It's an old airplane trick that sometimes works on computers too.
It's worked for me to get the printer back and get keyboard and mouse inputs back. Glad it worked for you.

[Raven]

9. An old airplane trick?????

You mean...you're flying along and the plane starts acting up so you turn everything off, count to 10 slowly and then turn it back on again??? :wow:

[trof]

10. Well, not the engines.

;-)
The Lockheed 1011 was an electronic marvel. In ground school during my transition training the electrical instructor told us about this trick. The problem was usually with the audio/visual gear, i.e. The Movies. The sound would get out of sync with the image or some such and I'd just kill the juice to everything in that system, count to 10, and turn everything back on.
Viola!
It was self-healing.

[FlaGranny]

11. It works on computers because

it allows the memory to clear, I believe. Just a reboot does not do this. So if you're having computer problems and a reboot doesn't work to reset everything, then power down so that everything gets dumped from the memory and then turn everything back on after waiting a bit. I'm no computer geek, but I hope I've explained that clearly.

Edit: This is a step I sometimes forget myself, because I don't really have that many problems with my computer, but when I do I'll reboot half a dozen times and THEN I'll remember.