DEV Community: Bryz︱🦾

Printer "Not Working"? Clear the Stuck Print Queue First

Bryz︱🦾 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:49:36 +0000

A user calls: "I click Print and nothing comes out." Often the printer is fine. A single stuck job in the Windows print queue is blocking everything behind it. Before reinstalling drivers or removing the printer, clear the queue.

Step 1: Confirm the queue is stuck

Open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, pick the printer, and open the print queue. If you see a job showing "Error" or "Deleting" that never goes away, that's your culprit.

Step 2: Stop the Print Spooler

Open Command Prompt as administrator and run:

net stop spooler

Step 3: Delete the stuck jobs

del /Q /F %systemroot%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*

These are only queued jobs, not drivers or settings, so they're safe to remove.

Step 4: Start the spooler again

net start spooler

Print a test page. If it works, you're done.

Still not printing?

Check the printer is online and has the same IP it had before (ping it).
Make sure the user is sending to the right printer (default printers change more than you'd think).
If the spooler keeps crashing, a bad driver is the next suspect. Escalate or reinstall the driver.

Why this matters

"Printer not working" is one of the most common help desk tickets. Clearing the spooler takes about a minute and fixes a big share of them, and it tells you quickly whether you're dealing with a queue problem or something bigger.

"Connected, But No Internet": Check for a 169.254 Address First

Bryz︱🦾 — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:27:38 +0000

A user calls the help desk: "My Wi-Fi says connected, but nothing loads." Before restarting the router or reinstalling network drivers, spend 30 seconds checking one thing: did the PC actually get an IP address from DHCP?

Step 1: Look at the IP address

Open Command Prompt (no admin rights needed) and run:

ipconfig

Find the adapter the user is on (usually Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter Ethernet) and look at the IPv4 Address line.

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 169.254.37.12

Step 2: Know what 169.254 means

An address that starts with 169.254 is an APIPA address (Automatic Private IP Addressing). Windows assigns it to itself when it asks for an address from a DHCP server and gets no answer. The adapter is "up," but it can't reach the router or the internet with that address.

A normal address on most networks looks more like 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, or 172.16.x.x to 172.31.x.x, with a Default Gateway filled in.

Step 3: Ask for a new address

Release the current address and request a fresh one:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

If /renew succeeds, run ipconfig again and confirm the address no longer starts with 169.254 and a default gateway is listed. Then test:

ping 8.8.8.8

If that ping replies, basic connectivity is back.

Step 4: If it's still 169.254

The PC still can't reach a DHCP server. Narrow it down:

Check the physical link. Reseat the Ethernet cable or forget and rejoin the Wi-Fi network.
Test another device on the same network. If it also fails, the problem is likely the network or the DHCP server, not this PC.
Check for a static address. Run ipconfig /all and look at DHCP Enabled. If it says No, someone set the address manually; follow your org's process before changing it.
Escalate with the ipconfig /all output pasted into the ticket so the network team can see exactly what the PC reported.

Why this habit helps

A 169.254 address points you straight at DHCP or the connection to it, so you skip the guesswork of driver reinstalls and reboots. And when you do escalate, the next tier gets clear evidence instead of "internet is broken."

One command, 30 seconds, and you know whether it's this PC or the network.

Troubleshoot Microsoft 365 Sign-In Issues with dsregcmd /status

Bryz︱🦾 — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 13:08:07 +0000

A user calls the help desk: "Teams keeps asking me to sign in" or "Outlook won't connect" on their work laptop. It's tempting to jump straight to resetting the password or rebuilding the Outlook profile. Before you do, spend 30 seconds checking whether the device is healthy in Microsoft Entra ID. One built-in Windows command tells you.

Step 1: Run the command

Open Command Prompt (no admin rights needed) and run:

dsregcmd /status

The output is long, but you only need a few lines from two sections.

Step 2: Check Device State

Look at the Device State section at the top:

AzureAdJoined : YES
DomainJoined : NO

AzureAdJoined : YES means the device is joined to Entra ID (cloud-joined).
DomainJoined : YES together with AzureAdJoined : YES means it's hybrid joined (on-prem Active Directory plus Entra ID).
If AzureAdJoined is NO on a device that should be joined, single sign-on to Microsoft 365 apps won't work properly. That's a device registration problem, not a password problem, so escalate or re-register the device per your org's process.

Step 3: Check SSO State

Scroll down to the SSO State section:

AzureAdPrt : YES

The PRT (Primary Refresh Token) is what lets Windows sign the user in to Microsoft 365 apps silently. If it shows NO:

Make sure the laptop is online (and on VPN if your org requires it).
Have the user lock the screen and unlock it, or sign out and back in. Windows tries to get a fresh PRT at sign-in and unlock.
Run the command again:

dsregcmd /status | findstr /i "AzureAdJoined AzureAdPrt"

That findstr filter shows just the lines you care about, which is handy when you're on a remote session with the user.

Step 4: Decide where the problem is

Joined = YES and PRT = YES, but the app still fails: focus on the account or the app (license, MFA, cached credentials, the app itself).
Joined = YES and PRT = NO after a lock/unlock: check network access and the user's account status, then escalate with the output attached.
Joined = NO: it's a device issue. Escalate to whoever manages device enrollment (often the Intune or endpoint team).

Why this habit helps

Checking the device first saves you from password resets and profile rebuilds that don't fix anything. It also gives the next tier clear evidence: paste the relevant dsregcmd /status lines into the ticket and they can pick up right where you left off.

One command, 30 seconds, and you know whether you're fixing the account or the device.

I built my own trading journal with plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Bryz︱🦾 — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 14:21:20 +0000

I trade a few stocks and wanted one place to log every trade and see if I'm actually improving. Most journals want a subscription or a broker login, so I built my own: Bryz Trades.

What it does

Logs long and short trades for any ticker, including partial exits
A dashboard with realized P&L, win rate, expectancy, and capital at risk, all from my own trades
A calendar of green and red days with week, month, and year totals
A position-size calculator for shares and options, using the 100x contract multiplier
One-click backup and import

How it's built

Static site on GitHub Pages, with no backend, no API keys, and no tracking
Data stays in the browser's localStorage
Money math runs in whole cents to avoid floating-point errors
44 unit tests plus Playwright browser checks at phone, tablet, and desktop sizes

What I learned

Data integrity comes first. Every redesign had to load my old saved trades without rewriting them. New fields like options type default safely, so the old data stays untouched.

It started as a one-screen SOFI levels card and grew into a full journal. Next, I'm writing up my Azure and Entra labs here too.