I have a problem, Internet. My printer is acting up. It’s a HP Photosmart C4240 All-In-One, and today it decided not to detect my black cartridge after printing a few pages, therefore rendering it unable to print. I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, taking both cartridges out and putting them back in again, cleaning the cartridges, and messing with CUPS and the drivers. No luck. This appears to be printer-independent, as I plugged the printer into my laptop and got the same thing.
This problem is particularly frustrating as I was planning to go around town and put up some flyers for NaNo, but I can’t do that if I don’t have any flyers to put up. Sigh.
So how do I fix this? Anyone know?
4 replies on “My printer doesn’t recognize its black cartridge”
My HP Officejet 7310 did this recently… I installed a fresh printer cartridge and it refused to know that it existed. From the bit of research I did on the internet, it looked like it might be this little bit of wire that makes contact with the sensor that tells the printer how much ink it has. The wire can get bent so it doesn’t make contact. Also, there was a whole bunch of junk where an old cartridge had leaked ink which had then dried. I spent a bit with a flashlight and a long pair of tweezers pulling that out… I can’t remember what finally ended up fixing the problem, though. I suspect it decided to work on its own and I didn’t have much say in things.
I did a little research and examining. This cartridge is a refilled cartridge, and apparently this printer has trouble with those sometimes. Luckily I found one manufactured by HP that didn’t break the bank (why is printer ink so expensive anyway? You’d think it was gas!), so I’ll wait until it shows up in the mail before printing anything else out. I can wait a few days, right?
Sounds like your printer has racial issues.
Ha! I was thinking the same thing.