My Insane Printer

[Janna]

Hi, all.

I'm having issues with my Epson Stylus Colour 400. It's been doing this for a while, so I put it away and just recently pulled it out again, hooked it up to see if it magically decided to work properly during its holiday.

It didn't.

Here's what's happening:

It prints fine, no problem, in colour or in black.

But on the left side of the page, I'd say in about where the second column would be if you were printing in four columns on a portait oriented page, it prints a whole lot of horizontal lines across the page. It's usually mostly black, which of course makes the printout completely useless for anything unless you only print on the right half of the page (and who really wants to do that???).

I've tried cleaning it out with rubbing alcohol, using a Q-tip to get into where the print heads are (not an easy task, the stupid thing doesn't *let* you get at them if there's still ink in the cartriges). That worked for a little while, but not very long.

When it's printing, you can hear a light buzzing noise whenever it passes across where it's printing the extra ink.

I've tried using all the internal helps (aligning the heads, having the printer clean the heads, etc.) and of course that didn't help.

Does anyone have any ideas that I could try? I'm willing to take the thing apart to fix it, but I don't want to do it if I have no clue what I might be looking to do once it's in pieces.

Thanks!

-Janna

[james8547]

It sounds like a hardware problem. However, I'd try to re-install the printer and its driver just to be sure.

Encountered a similar situation with a HP LaserJet. I just replaced the ink cartridge and used compressed air to clean the printer a bit and it worked fine.

[morriswindgate]

WIth an Epson printer this means it is going out.

[Janna]

I've reinstalled the drivers - actually got a new computer after it started doing this, and so had to install it on that.

I'll try getting inside to clean it up, but if that doesn't help, I guess it'll only be good for printing down one side of the page and I should pick up a new printer... *sigh* Like I have money lying around to do that with...

Thanks, though!

-Janna

[morriswindgate]

For a low priced pinter, go with anything but Epson as they tend to have a short life. WIth Epson the more expensive units are very good, but HP, Apollo (HP), canon, or lexmarks will last longer.

[Janna]

I don't like HP very much (had experience with them in the past, and the inkjets are a pain in the butt).

Lexmark is the brand I was thinking of - anyone have opinions on scanner/printer combos? That's the way I'd like to go...

-Janna

[morriswindgate]

Don't write HP off so quick, I have a Laserjet 4L and a 882C that have been ticking right along for over 5 years.
I also recently bought an HP1210 Printer/scanner/copier for $99.99 that is fast and puts out excellent quality.

[james8547]

I bought a used Canon BJ-2100 printer for $2. I dropped it numerous times, dropped something on it several times and it's still working. The print quality isn't the best but it's good enough to print word doc. The printer didn't even had software so I had to go d/l the drive.

I use Lexmark (X83 I think) to print high quality stuff.

[Janna]

I think I figured it out somewhat.

I took the thing apart and found a piece of plastic in there. Pulled it out and it helped. I think there's still some inside, though; it's still doing the same thing to an extent, but much less and I think if I open it up again and really poke around, I'll be able to fix it completely.

So yay!

-Janna