My ten year old self built PC has been virtually fault free and has served me extremely well until very recently when I started having sudden printing problems.
My operating system is Windows Home XP SP3 with an Abit NF7 Motherboard with 1.5Gb Memory and an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU. My present printer is an Epsom Photo Stylus R800 (about 5 years old), connected via USB. I have been using continuously compatible ink carts. from the same supplier after the original Epson’s ran out. I have never had any problems with these ink carts.
The problem with this printer………. About 3 weeks ago a couple of the 8 cartridges were beginning to run out, but I was able to carry on printing for awhile whilst I ordered new inks. BEFORE fitting the new carts. and at first the colour (mainly photos) and text were as normal. The next colour photo had a very ‘magenta’ colour cast over the whole picture and since then every photo, although the colours seem to be present, has this same magenta hue over them. Text colour when in a document and black text appear as normal. I replaced the near empty carts. including the ‘gloss optimizer.’ After fitting these it is impossible to get the chequered pattern from this latter cart to print the normal pattern. It seems to be ‘firing’ on about half the jets randomly, exactly the same random pattern every print test. I completed about six ‘cleans’ which of course was using up all the inks. I assumed a problem with the new gloss optimizer. I contacted the ink supplier who sent me not only another new G. O. but 2 other colours as I had used a lot of ink trying to get a normal print out, all FREE incidentally. The new gloss optimizer after several cleans is showing EXACTLY the same random checkered pattern as before. Colour and black text is printing as normal. All photo prints are still showing the same magenta hue. I have tried plugging the R800 into different USB sockets, all to no avail. Have also tried a different USB cable from printer to PC and altered printer settings etc., again the same fault is apparent. Can anyone throw any light on this problem please?
Many thanks for any help as I can’t afford another quality photo printer at this time.
