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Guide Objective:

• Keep as many printers out of the land fills as possible.
• Save people from having to buy a new printer.
• Help people regain control of their printers.
• Save people money on ink
• Help produce better quality prints
  

There are a number of reasons why your printer can stop working.

Problems And Solutions:

• Loose cables - Solution: Check that cables are securely fastened to the back of your computer and printer
• Ink is dried up - Solution: Use the print-head cleaning utility within your printer software. Refer to your printer manual for info
• There is a document stuck in the printer queue - Solution: Go to your print queue and cancel all other documents. Once the queue is cleared, try the print again
• A service your printer relies on has been disabled - Solution: Take a look at your windows services to see if all of the services are set to automatic. When you find one, check its dependencies to see if it relies on anything else that is turned off.
• You are out of ink in at least one of the cartridges - Solution: If you don't have colored ink and just want to print black, try clearing the warning and continuing on. Instead of pushing cancel, try pushing enter : )
• There is a problem with the software you are trying to print from - Solution: Can you print fine out of another program? Try printing out of notepad. If the program you were using is the culprit, try getting an update for the program.
• Your computer has lost communication with the printer - Solution: If it is a network printer, confirm the IP address of the printer. Also confirm that you can ping the printer of computer it is connected to.
• The printer software on your computer has become corrupted - Solution: You would likely get an error message indicated that this is the case. If so, reinstall the software. If you don't have the CD any more, you can download the drivers and application from the manufactures website.

Blurry, grainy, streaky, banding, wrong colors
If the print quality is suffering, try running the print-head cleaning utility. This just might fix the problem. However, you may have to run it several times before the quality improves.

Bad Colors - The colors are off
If the colors seems to not be set right, you can try a few different thing to see if it resolves the problem. If your print was coming out with too much red in it, go back and check your original picture closely to see if in fact there was a lot of red in the image to begin with. If this is the case, you would then have to do some color correcting within a photo editing suite such as GIMP or Photoshop.

Things you can try:

• Check that you have selected the appropiate paper type in the printer settings. For ex: if you are using photopaper, one of the photo-paper settings will need to be selected
• Do a print cleaning to ensure none of the printhead nozzles are clogged
• Check your ink levels to make sure you are not just running out of one of the colors. Maybe you printed a whole bunch of Valentine hearts and now your out of red ink.
• Check that you are using the right ICC profile recommended by your printer manufacture

Should you just go buy a new printer?
It depends. If you find that you are do a serious amount of printing, you may want to look into a lazer printer. The ink cartridges last a lot longer but are more expensive as well. If your printer is fairly new, and you just need it for regular home use, then buy a new printer all of the time is not really necessary. Using the steps mentioned earlier, you should be able to get the old boat anchor working again. If you can still buy ink for it, and I am sure you can, then you should be good. If you are in need of some extreme quality, and your ten year old printer is just with never produce what you need your print to look like, then I guess it is time to break down and buy a newer model. However, keep old betsy around. If you keep your old printers running, you can use them printing text, invoices, and things not requiring super quality. Keeping your old printers around will also actually same you big time in ink costs. Some older cartriges tend to hold more ink depending on your printers model.

Making your ink last:
If you only print once in a while, then imagine how long it will take to use up the ink of 2 or even 3 printers. Not only do you have both black and color cartridges sitting in each of the printers, but you can play with the settings to use less ink. f your printers are all set to extreme quality, then they are going to lay down the maximun amount of ink per print. For most prints, you should adjust your settings to the lower quality settings. One strategy is to have a printer for high quality prints such as photos and one for text and daily use.

Final tip:
Be sure to keep your printer turned on at all time. This will ensure that the printheads will not dry out. When a printer is left on, it will do a cleaning from time to time by iteself keeping the printheads safe.