Brother All-In-One Problem

[writeaway]

I have a fairly new Brother MFC-240C all-in-one printer. Please understand that I have never owned a color printer before, I've always used (and still do) my trusty old (HP) laser printer. I like the new printer BUT it keeps telling me I am out of ink, that I am out of cyan and yellow and that I am almost out of red and black. I could not possibly be out of ink. Only on rare occasions do I use it to make color prints. I use it to make copies and I use it to scan. It tells me I am out of cyan and yellow and that I am almost out of red and black.

 

My guess is that the ink is drying up for lack of use. Could that be it? What really irritates me is that it not only refuses to print but it refuses to copy which is what I depend on it for. Is there some way to override its stubbornness? Force it to produce a copy? If I want a lousy copy of something shouldn't I be able to get one? I still have black ink and all I want is a black and white copy. Is it normal for the @#!? thing to just quit whenever it wants?

 

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

HP Pavilion - Pentium® 4CPU

160GB HDD 512 MB RAM

Windows XP SP2 Home

[YoKenny]

I feel your pain.

 

Any one of the inks that runs out will result in the printer refusing to print anything!

 

I find that making color prints sucks up ink faster than a SUV sucks gas idling at a coffee shop pickup window.

 

Take the Flash card or whatever to a local Kinko's or Wall-Mart and they will produce much better quality and longer lasting photos plus I bet they have a coffee shop near by where you can go to wait for the prints.

 

I think that reminds me of the Princess that used to wait for her Prince to come.

 

Every once in awhile the printer wakes up and goes through a print head clean cycle so the the ink does not dry up and thus uses a bit of ink in the process.

[Andavari]

Most of the ink that comes with printers isn't a full cartridge as explained to me by a guy that worked at Staples when we got our HP last year and he was correct, it was out of ink in no time.

[Corona]

I haven't had a printer since 1998. I can't stand them. If I need something printed (which is very rare) I go use my sisters'. I'm not dealing with that mess. The multiple icons that pop up in the systray and boot pop-up windows, the 15 extra processes running in Task Manager and all that crap. Life's too short.

[DennisD]

You don't mention whether you've done anything with your printer other than glare at it and call it some choice names.

 

Your printer should have a preferences set up which includes head cleaning, head alignment, nozzle check etc, as mine does, and believe me, my printer is old.

 

 

If it hasn't been used for a while, it won't perform unless I run one or more of these routines.

 

Edit: I can also choose to print in black only, which works fine when the colour cartridge is empty, which is the case at the moment.

[YoKenny]

Take the empty ink cartridge to an ink refill place like Island Ink-Jet and they will refill it for one tenth of the cost of a new cartridge:

http://www.islandinkjet.com/ourlocations

 

They use quality inks and I have refilled my cartridges a couple of times and it only takes them about 10 minutes per cartridge to refill.

 

They are real handy to me as I drop the cartridges off there then go to the bank which is just down the street to get some cash then by the time I get back they are ready.

[DennisD]

Take the empty ink cartridge to an ink refill place like Island Ink-Jet and they will refill it for one tenth of the cost of a new cartridge:

 

I've got a place like that situated only a few miles away. The retail outlets for cartridges will tell you to avoid these places as you get problems with "refills".

 

bulls**t, I've never had a problem with a cartridge refilled by these guys. They've all worked perfectly.

 

The only cartridges I've bought in years have come from Aldi's or Lidl's. Have a branch of each fairly near, and they occassionally get decent cartridges in for absolutely silly prices. Never had a problem with them either.

[Andavari]

bulls**t, I've never had a problem with a cartridge refilled by these guys. They've all worked perfectly.

That's because they want you to pay more for the exact same thing. I'd think retail stores would offer re-filling as it's environmental and there's so many green-heads about I'm surprised they haven't complained about empty ink cartridges. Here in the U.S. Staples gives money for the empty ink cartridges when buying a new one, so those I know are being recycled and re-used.

 

They do sell those ink kits online and in magazines, etc., and they're relatively easy to use for only a fraction of the price of buying a new ink cartridge. There's also a company (I forget their name, and site address) where you can buy re-filled ink cartridges and they guarantee their ink.