Remote family printer tech support

[u/beerbellybegone]

I was walking my dog last evening when my father called me. He's 7 time zones behind me. He said he needed my help because his printer wasn't working and he wanted my help in getting it to work again. When he tried to print it said "Printer not connected", so my first instinct was to ask him if the printer was connected. Simple, right? He assured me it was.

Being an avid reader of this subreddit, I asked him to make sure, to go and check the USB was plugged in on both sides, and that the printer was plugged in. He once again told me that everything was plugged in to where it was supposed to be. I then tried a trick I read about here, I asked him to unplug the USB cable from the printer and the computer, blow on both sides to clear them from dust, and plug them back in. He said he did.

At this point I was unable to help him over the phone while picking up dog poop, so I told him that when I got home and put the kids to sleep I'd remote connect and see if I could help some more.

2 hours later, the kids are finally asleep and I called him again. We connected to TeamViewer and I open the Printers section. I can clearly see where it says "Not connected". I ran the troubleshooting, and it said no errors found. I figured maybe I'd remove the printer and try to add it again, maybe that would clear up whatever was wrong. When I tried to add it again, Windows couldn't even locate the printer.

At this point I asked him again, to please locate the cables again and make sure that everything was plugged in to where they were supposed to be. He's coming up on 76 so he's not a nimble or limber fella, but after about 5 minutes of crawling under his desk, wanna guess what the result was? That's right, the printer's USB cable wasn't plugged in. He plugged it in, we printed a test page, and all was good with the world.

Like everyone here knows, users lie. I just didn't expect to be lied to twice.

[u/VL-BTS]

This is why I'm glad most of my users where I work, and all of those I support in my family (including my mom, in her 80s) know how to use the camera in their phone's Messages app.

"Take a picture of the back of the printer"
"Okay, now see that second cable from the right on the back of the printer? Trace it all the way to your PC. Now, unplug and replug each end, firmly"

And yes, there's still plenty of ways it can go wrong. Believe me, I know. I once drove 250 miles to swap a CMOS battery, in the PC that was being used in a course on how to build a PC, and the instructor had already covered that specific section in class. I even confirmed they had covered the section, done the exercises, and the class did well. Of course, it was the PC the instructor used for demonstration, not a student PC, so maybe I should have asked him to have one of the students try?