Cranky printer

I wonder if anyone can help on this Epson Stylus Color 440 jet printer problem.

The printer was working when connected to my W98 pc. But after connecting it to my wife’s W95 pc (and downloading the W95 driver), it acts cranky. Often when I hit the Print button on a Word97 screen, nothing happens, but if I go to Start\Settings\Printer and click Properties, that <sometimes> wakes the printer up and it prints the Word page.

Can anyone tell me what might be going on? "¦. wdc

 

Hi wdc202.

Sorta sounds like you need to make that printer the "default" printer. Go to the printers and RIGHT click on the printer and LEFT click on the "Set as Default Printer." That should do it. If it isn't that get back to us.

 

giles: Thanks for your help. I followed your advice and have some new "results" that <may> shed some light on my problem.

1 First I established that the Epson is the default printer, as shown on the Settings/Printer (SP) screen. The "Epson" printer was highlighted.

2. In one series of clicks I got these results

a. I typed a short text file in Word97 and saved it. I then used Word97 File/Print to print it.

b. After about 15 seconds an Epson status bar flashed on and then went off about 2 seconds later. It showed that both color and black ink levels were above 50%.

c. But the printer stayed asleep.

d. I returned to the SP screen and DCd the highlighted "Epson" . A status bar appeared and said that "There 0 documents in the queueâ€.

Why didn’t it show the document I asked to be printed in the queue?

3. In another series of steps:

a. I clicked File/Properties/Utilities on the highlighted Epson bar on the S/P screen.

b. I then clicked Epson Status. Sometimes I got message "Ready for printingâ€.

Other times I got message "Communications error. Check cable to printer." (I did and cable appears fine.) After about 15 seconds the message changes to one with a big red X on a picture of the cable.

4. In another series, I clicked File/Properties/ Print a Test Page.

a. The printer stayed asleep. But a screen appeared that said a test pattern had been sent to the printer.

5. Finally, I went to File\Properties\utilities\Consumables. A screen appeared that showed both my color and black ink supplies as empty (in contrast to what the flashed-on status bar showed (2b, above).

FWIW, neither of the two ink lights on the printer panel show red.

Also:-- Several times as I clicked around, the printer would wake up, move a sheet of paper, hum as if it were printing, and eject the sheet. But there was no ink on the sheet.. And several times there was a loud clanking sound above the nice hum of the jets.


Can you (or anyone) tell anything from all this? .... wdc

 

Hi.

Your computer is consistently telling you the printer cable is bad. Find a friend with a computer and borrow his cable and try it. Be sure to turn your computer off while doing this. That's the best way to tell if the cable is bad.

Also, you can take your printer to your friends house, load the drivers and try your printer there. That will verify the printer is working (arn't friends wonderful).

Take your printer cartridges out and put them back in. It will reseat the contacts on the cartridges.

Be sure you have the parallel port set for ECP in the bios. That will enable two-way communication between your computer and the printer.

With a bad cable the computer may be getting the proper status and sending the data out to the printer but the printer may not be getting the data. Your computer seems to have processed the file out to the printer. That would point to the cable or the printer, not the drivers. However, you might see if there is another driver available, possibly one supplied by Windows, install that one and switch the default to that.

The key to this type of problem is to absolutely eliminate each thing as the possible cause, cable, printer, cartridges, drivers, etc. Otherwise you'll be chasing ghosts around.

Let us know what happened.

 

Giles Rapture (modified)! My dead printer has come back to life. At least it printed one document so far.

I followed your advice but not in the logical way you outlined. Because I could not get out today to try my Epson with a friend, I did these things:

1. I changed the cable to another I had.

2. I reloaded the driver from the Epson site.

3. I cleaned the nozzles using the Epson cleaning facility.

One or more of these things seemed to have made a difference. I believe it is #2.

But two problems remaining that baffle me.

a. I can’t make the printer the <permanent> default printer. --- I can set the Epson (it is the only one listed) to be the default when I go to Start\Settings\Printer by highlighting Epson and then right clicking to confirm that the Make this the Default is checked. But when I then close the Printer screen, return to my Desktop, click Start\Settings\Printer again, lo and behold, the Epson line is NOT highlighted anymore. What can I be doing wrong?

b. Although the printer does now print my document (one paragraph of text), it takes a full minute after I say PRINT before the printer comes alive. What possibly could cause it to take that long?

I’ll try a Defrag but I doubt that is the problem. I don’t see that sluggishness with any other application. What could it be?

In any event, my wife now has a printer (kind of). Thanks much for your suggestions and prompting. wdc

 

Hi.

Nice going.

Defraging will have no effect on your problem. Cleaning the print heads will have no effect on your problem. (Removing the cartridges and putting them back in might help in making sure the cartridge contacts make a better contact in the printer.)

There's something still wrong but it is a bit of a mystery. I would still try and run the printer on another system. That would eliminate the printer. At that point I would still look at drivers again.