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Canon printer shooting blanks

Bonesdad

Platinum Member
friend has a strange problem. He just installed Works Suite the other day, but nothing prints from Word...a two page document will cause the printer to shoot out 2 blank pages, with no print.

Printer works fine when printing email.

Apparently, nothing prints from Notepad either.

He has updated the drivers, and I have looked thru knowledgebase on Microsoft.com, to no avail.

Printer drivers have been updated.

Printer is a Canon i470D.

Any ideas?
 
Check the FAQs on Canon's site - I think I recall something on that there but I can't be sure.
At one time a friend of mine has his font color set to white as default (I suspect a "friend" of his had something to do with that). Check that too.

.bh.
 
Have you tried DEEP CLEANING the printer heads?

Cannons are notorious for one day working and the next day spitting out blank pages because the heads clogged-up.

The reason Cannon ink-tanks cost a fraction of the price of HP and Lexmark ink-tanks is because the print heads are built into the printer instead of the ink tanks. This drastically reduces the price of the ink tanks, but runs a much higher risk of eventual clogged printer heads.

All Cannon Printers have software drivers (under printer properties) that allows for printer head cleaning under "Maintenance".

Run the cleaning process once or twice and print a test page... this is more then likely your culprit.
 
Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
Have you tried DEEP CLEANING the printer heads?

Cannons are notorious for one day working and the next day spitting out blank pages because the heads clogged-up.

The reason Cannon ink-tanks cost a fraction of the price of HP and Lexmark ink-tanks is because the print heads are built into the printer instead of the ink tanks. This drastically reduces the price of the ink tanks, but runs a much higher risk of eventual clogged printer heads.

All Cannon Printers have software drivers (under printer properties) that allows for printer head cleaning under "Maintenance".

Run the cleaning process once or twice and print a test page... this is more then likely your culprit.

Just FYI, it's "Canon"

😛
 
I personally have not had a Canon head clog since the BJC-4000 (6 or 7 years ago). I have had the occasional white streaking with my i450 and iP4000 that was readily resolved by cleaning. Plus the problem noted in a separate thread in the Peripherals section which took over a year to develop. You should never experience a "white pages" clog with a Canon if you use decent quality ink.

.bh.
 
Does anything else print? Kind of wierd that it's just one very popular well-used app. Try Wolfshanze suggestions. If that doesn't work, and you feel adventurous / confident enough to do it, take the print head out and run some very hot (near boiling) water through it. I had to fix my old Epson that way when the ink got fatally clogged in there.
 
I haven't experienced that problem with my IP4000 personally, but I've seen it before with previous models of my own and others; and I know that the heads are not in the tanks, so it's possible it could happen on almost any Canon model I suppose.
 
Originally posted by: Bonesdad
friend has a strange problem. He just installed Works Suite the other day, but nothing prints from Word...a two page document will cause the printer to shoot out 2 blank pages, with no print.

Printer works fine when printing email.

Apparently, nothing prints from Notepad either.

He has updated the drivers, and I have looked thru knowledgebase on Microsoft.com, to no avail.

Printer drivers have been updated.

Printer is a Canon i470D.

Any ideas?

Sounds like a software problem if it prints email fine. Make sure to preview the Word Document in print mode first before you actually print.
 
Printer works fine when printing email.
Ah... I missed this part... it's probably not the heads if it does print SOMETHING... the heads being fouled up will effect everything.

I'm officially confused now.
 
Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
Printer works fine when printing email.
Ah... I missed this part... it's probably not the heads if it does print SOMETHING... the heads being fouled up will effect everything.

I'm officially confused now.



yes, me too...I had him check to see if it's possible that the print color was white, but that is a long shot IMO.

I'd like to get a look at it, but I'm afraid that if I figured it out, I'd be getting calls weekly about "this or that doesn't work right" or "I think I have a virus" etc etc...

he has installed the latest drivers for the printer and updated windows xp, cleaned the print heads (tho again, email prints fine).

What's interesting is that it spits out the correct # of pages, but has no print.
 
Word has some main type of file (normal.dot ) that is used as the print template. If it gets corrupted this is the symptom. The fix is to rename the file with word closed and it will be recreated when word is opened. See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291344

The notepad deal has me stumped so far unless thier functions are related. Try Wordpad too. Just in case have him also check to see that there is no more than one installed 470 printer and it is the default. Notepad goes right to printing without allowing a printer selection.


Jim
 
Thanks for the replies...

He said the font was not set to white, but when he changed the print color to red, it printed. He used a non-Canon cartridge (which shouldn't be a problem) but I am asking him to make sure he pulled the little tape tab off the cartridge before he installed! If he did pull it off, I'll ask him to try a Canon cartridge...I'll post the solution when we find it.
 
The i 470D uses two different ink tanks - one is the BCI-24C which contains all three of the colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) and the other is the BCI-24 Black - the fact that both are BCI-24 can be confusing - needs one of each in the proper location in the head. It would be very strange if it could print black from one app and not from another unless one was using graphics mode while the other was using text mode printing. This keeps getting stranger all the time... But I'm glad I got you closer to the solution.

.bh.
 
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