Software · guide
By Alberto Gulotta · Updated · 14 min read
How to fix printer streaks has a step that belongs before all the others, and Microsoft puts it second rather than first, which is close enough. It costs one sheet of paper and it tells you where to look next.
“This helps determine whether the issue is with Windows or the printer.”
- “Print a test page directly from the printer’s control panel.”
- “If the test page also looks poor, clean or service the printer hardware.”
- “If the test page looks fine, continue with the steps below.”
One sheet, no computer involved. A test page printed from the machine’s own panel never passes through Windows, so streaks on it point to the hardware and a clean one points to the computer side. Microsoft puts this second, before any setting is touched. It tells you where to go next: to the hardware, or on through the steps below.
Without that test, every list of fixes is a list of things to try in the dark. Some of them address the printer and some the computer, and until you know which side you are on you are working through both. Microsoft names the causes at the top — “incorrect printer settings, outdated drivers, low ink or toner levels, or printer hardware problems”, plus a paper type or print resolution that “doesn’t match your printer’s capabilities” — and those fall on opposite sides of the line.
The hardware half is mostly obvious once you are in it, with one exception worth reading before you start: Microsoft’s first step starts with the paper before it reaches the ink. It asks you to check that “the correct paper type and size are loaded”, and to use “clean, dry paper that meets the printer manufacturer’s recommendations”.
“Repeat the cleaning process only if needed, as it may use additional ink.”
Worth having before you run a head clean three times in a row hoping it improves. Cleaning is not a free operation — it works by pushing ink through the nozzles, so each cycle costs some of what you were trying to conserve. Microsoft says it once and moves on; it is the kind of sentence that saves a cartridge.
Microsoft’s hardware step names one machine only. Its step 5 is written for inkjet printers — Clean printhead, Align printhead, Maintenance tools — and a laser printer has none of those parts. It has a corona wire, a drum and a fuser instead, and they fail in ways no amount of head cleaning will touch. So the test page that sent you into this half asks a second question before any of it is useful: which of the two machines is on the desk.
One line in Brother’s list belongs to a different machine altogether. Ahead of every printing part it puts “wipe the scanner glass strip with a dry lint free soft cloth”, on models with a document feeder. It sits in a print-quality list because a copy is also a scan: on those models a sheet fed through the document feeder passes the glass strip, so a mark there can land on copies made that way, while a document printed from the computer never goes near it. If the streak shows up when you copy and not when you print, nothing is wrong with the printing at all.
The Windows half has one item worth ruling out first.
The three settings to check, and where they live
Windows 11: Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Printers & scanners → your printer → Printing preferences. Windows 10: Settings → Devices → Printers & scanners → your printer → Manage → Printing preferences.
That middle line is the one to check first. Economy, Draft and Toner saver are the modes Microsoft asks you to turn off, and a printer in one of them is doing what it was told. Nothing about the printed page announces that it is a choice rather than a fault.
If the settings are right, Microsoft’s next step, on Windows 11 and on Windows 10, is the automated Printer troubleshooter in the Get Help app. After the cleaning step covered above come the ordinary ones: update the driver from Device Manager and, if there is no update, “select Uninstall device”, restart, and “Windows will attempt to reinstall the printer drivers automatically”. Then print the same document from another app — Microsoft suggests Notepad or Word — because a problem that appears in only one program is a problem with that program. And finally restart the Print Spooler from services.msc.
If the complaint is blurry rather than streaked, it is a different step. Microsoft separates them: streaking and fading point at the printer or its settings, while blurriness gets its own step about scaling. Make sure the app you print from is up to date, “verify image resolution and print scaling” inside it, and “avoid enlarging low-resolution images before printing”. Microsoft’s own words: “Blurry text or images can sometimes be caused by scaling or app issues.” A picture that looked acceptable on screen at a quarter of the page does not survive being stretched across all of it, and no printer setting can put back detail that was never in the file.
What this page will not do is tell you how to clean a specific printer. The command is called Clean printhead on some machines and something else on others, it lives in the printer’s own software or on its panel, and the manufacturer is the only one who knows which.
It will not recommend third-party ink or refill kits. Microsoft’s instruction is that cartridges should not be “empty or expired”, and everything past that is a purchasing decision this site has run no test on.
And it will not tell you a streak means the printer is finished. Microsoft’s own list goes through paper, cartridges that “aren’t empty or expired”, a test page, settings, a troubleshooter, a cleaning cycle and a driver, and it does not end with a new printer.
Three ways in. Print the test page first; it tells you which of the other two to read.
A page printed from the machine’s own panel never passes through Windows. What it shows points to the hardware; what it does not show points to the computer.
Paper before ink, a cleaning cycle that costs ink of its own, and an alignment step that is separate from cleaning.
Three settings in Printing preferences, a driver, one app tested against another, and the spooler last.
Not covered here. It will not tell you how to clean your particular printer. The command has different names on different machines and lives in software the manufacturer wrote.
It will not recommend ink, refills or third-party cartridges. Microsoft says cartridges should not be empty or expired; the rest is shopping, and nothing here has been tested.
And it will not conclude that streaks mean a dead printer. Microsoft’s own list goes through paper, cartridges, a test page, settings, a troubleshooter, a cleaning cycle and a driver. What holds instead is simple: the printer’s own test page points to the half to look in, and the ink and laser routines come from the companies that build those printers.
Everything that happens between pressing print and holding the page.
Written by Alberto Gulotta
Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.
Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.
Written on 22 August 2026 · last checked 30 September 2026.
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