Any printer or IT pros here that can answer a question?

[Jim-from-Ohio]

I have a printer ordered for my office where my printer died but until it gets here I have to take my printer from home and move it to my office.  Is there a certain order of steps that I need to do to get it to work properly.  I vaguely remember setting up printers in the past a certain order of steps have to be done.  For example does anyone know what order of steps the following has to be done or does this order look right?

• set printer in place
• put paper in printer
• leave turned off at first
• plug electrical cord to back of printer and in wall
• put printer cord into printer and into computer
• turn on printer 
• test it with trying to print something
• if it does not print, download driver

I know this may be basic but I just don't want to mess this up and I fear this turning into a big problem. thank you. 

[IRonMaN]

Things are pretty much plug and play these days, you can’t really mess things up hooking up a printer.  When you are done just make sure you have the printer selected as the default printer in ProSeries.

[qbteachmt]

You didn't tell us if this is a USB  cable from the printer. You have it right, but at "turn on the printer" you should wait a while. The printer will warm up and initialize, and then it sends a communication to the computer, which, as PnP (plug and play) will detect the device. Then, you wait while the computer tries to understand if it already has what it needs to set up the device (windows has a lot of device drivers in it, now). Usually, when you download anything nowadays, it's just a control panel for the printer, for things such as "out of paper" notifications or access to more advanced functions.

For instance, you PnP the USB. Then, you want to activate the WiFi function, so that is additional steps for the user. Also, there might be multi-function, such as scan-and-email, that you would set up.

Just give the computer enough time to do the hard stuff first.

By the way, (and I might be cursing it), the printer I still use is a Duplex Brother from 2009. It still works with that same set of steps as you describe.