Lexmark Printer S305

[Phil-Logan]

I bought above printer in feb 2010. Will not print anything from my PC. Message on printer panel said cyan ink low. Got a new one and installed it correctly. Tried to print something, said blank ink is low. Got new black and installed (also got the magenta and yellow just in case). Guess what - panel said yellow is low. So I installed yellow and magenta so it now has new ones all round and it still does not print. It is OK with a printhead clean page and a test page and an alighment page. All beautiful in glorious color but still won't print from PC. I have tried printing emails and selections from Excel files - nothing. Control panel / printers / ... / print queue shows them all in the queue but with no status.

All cables (USB and power) have been checked, disconnected, reconnected at both ends and no problem with them. Have tried using the other 2 USB ports - no joy.

Have reinstalled the printer driver by download (no joy) and from CD which came with the printer (also no joy). When I open the printer cover and close it again, print head does its usual set up and then goes back to its rest position. It does not seem to recognise there is anything in the queue. When the problem first arose, it printed stuff from the queue after I restarted the PC, but that did not work a second time.

The printer has been perfectly good until this problem started about a week ago. Can anyone help me please? I'm about to throw the b... machine out the window!

Phil Logan (in South Africa)

[Phil-Logan]

This is just an addition to my query. I said that restarting the PC did not print all the items in the Q. But it did - reason for thinking it did not was that there was nothing in the Q. Upshot is that I can only print items in Q on restarting / rebooting.

But there is an item in the Q that simply refuses to be printed. I don't even know how it got there as I don't recognise the filename. When I try to delete it,  the status says "deleted ... printing" and it stays there. If I then try to resume, it says "printing ... deleted". In other words it has multiple statuses (stati?) at the same time. If I can get rid of this, I think my problem will be solved, but what should I do to remove it?

[Geek-9pm]

Welcome!
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If the thing was working good from the start and then bean to malfunction, you would think that it is the printer. Or the cable. Or did you do it wireless? Wireless can often fail. Cable is better.

Limited warranty period and extended warranty period
The warranty period starts on the date of original purchase as shown on the purchase receipt. The standard warranty period ends 12 months later. By registering this product within 90 days after the date of original purchase, you will receive an additional 2 years extended limited warranty service, which would bring the total period of coverage to 3 years after the date of original purchase. All of the terms set forth in this Statement of Limited Warranty shall apply with full force and effect to any extended warranty.
Limited warranty service
To obtain warranty service you may be required to present proof of original purchase. You may be required to deliver your product to the Remarketer or Lexmark, or ship it prepaid and suitably packaged to a Lexmark designated location. You are responsible for loss of, or damage to, a product in transit to the Remarketer or the designated location.
When warranty service involves the exchange of a product or part, the item replaced becomes the property of the Remarketer or Lexmark. The replacement may be a new or repaired item. The replacement item assumes the remaining warranty period of the original product.

The Lexmark has a 12 month warranty if you registered in withing 90 days of purchase. Hope you did.

[Phil-Logan]

Hi geek-9pm. Thanks. I use a USB cable. It's not the printer per se as it does print test pages. I did post a reply to myself confirming that the Q gets printed when I reboot / restart, except for one "rogue" file that sits there with "deleting .. printing" or  vice versa. If I could actually delete this item in the Q I think it would solve my problem.

Do you think I should do a full re-install of the print driver? And is it necessary to do an "uninstall" first? I'm not sure what that entails as I've not done an uninstall before on anything!

Phil Logan

[Geek-9pm]

Yes. That is the easy to purge a bad file in the Q.
Install a new instance of the same printer. Use a different USB port.
But have you first tried this?
1. Puse the document
2. Delete same document.
3. reboot

[patio]

Printers = Bic lighters.

When they run outta gas...replace 'em...

[Phil-Logan]

Fixed!!! 
I found that I already had 2 instances of the driver installed - one for S300 series and the other for S400. Never thought of that before. I tried the pause - delete - reboot idea and that worked. It still would not communicate with the printer (except after a reboot), and it was when I did an uninstall, the first one worked but the second one said "no way - there are items being printed" (words to that effect) that I found the other spoolQ and did the same routine. Then I was able to uninstall both, and reinstall from the CD as if it is a brand new printer (which it is, almost).
Part of the problem may have been that when I take the laptop with me, I don't want to drag the printer along as well, and I have not been very careful in reconnecting the USB cable into the same "port". I always thought it didn't matter - one learns by mistakes!
Thanks geek-9pm and patio - I'm happy that it's not a BIC lighter.

[patio]

I'm happy that it's not a BIC lighter

Ditto.....good to hear !