Good Lord, do I hate it when I start spending lots of money, and random stuff completely unrelated to what I’m spending money on starts to break down. First, I spent $200 at the auto shop to NOT fix the alternator light (which is worth a Pit Rant in itself, but I never got around to it) and now, my color printer is acting all hinky.
Here’s the problem: It’s an HP Deskjet 882C, between 3 and 5 years old, can’t remember exactly. All of a sudden, it stopped printing in yellow or yellow-based colors – so green comes out blue, orange comes out red, and purple…well, purple prints just fine, actually. So far I’ve replaced the color cartridge TWICE and the black cartridge once (since replacing one of the color cartridges messed up the black as well!) and I’ve still got the same problem. I ran through all the diagnostics (align/clean the printer head, etc.) and checked the cable connections, no luck.
Is there anything else I can try before giving up and buying a new printer? (Hopefully one that uses the same type of cartridges…they be expensive!) I guess it’s not worth having it serviced since that would cost more than a new one would…
I think the print heads are actually part of the cartridge in most HP inkjets.
My best guesses would be:
-The printer driver software - not terribly likely to be the problem, but worth a try - uninstall the printer, click ‘yes’ when it says “some files were only used for this etc… do you want to delete them?”, then restart your machine and reinstall the printer according to the instruction manual.
If that doesn’t fix it, I’d suspect some kind of electronic problem with the printer, it could be a faulty component somewhere in the actual printer control hardware (in which case replacement of the whole printer is likely to be cheaper than repair), or (another long shot) it could be a problem with the rows of electrical contacts that press against the copper strips on the side of the cartridges - have a look and see if these are dirty/damaged/corroded and maybe gently and carefully clean them (entirely at your own risk).
If the print head is part of the cartridge, there are electrical contacts on the cartridge. It’s possible that these are not making a proper contact. I’m not sure if you can see the corresponding contacts on the printer, but if so you might try cleaning it. (I’m not sure how, that depends on what exactly is wrong with it. Canned air would be the first thing I’d try. A dry cotton swab would be my second choise.)
On second thought, the first thing I’d try is to push and wiggle the printer cartridge. The objective is to make the electrical contacts rub against and clean each other.
I’ll try messing with the contacts once I build up the courage, don’t want this thing to quit on me completely yet. I did look at them earlier and blew some compressed air in the unit, didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
Have you tried running the cleaning utility 16 to 20 times? This was the advice that Epson tech support gave me many years ago and it has worked a few times on different printers. It wastes a lot of ink.
So far I’ve replaced the color cartridge TWICE and the black cartridge once (since replacing one of the color cartridges messed up the black as well!) and I’ve still got the same problem. I ran through all the diagnostics (align/clean the printer head, etc.) and checked the cable connections, no luck.