Just got a refurbished (from Dell) Dell 3100cn color laser printer. Set it up with the new in package toners and drum. Installed the drivers. Printed a b&w test page: It's fine. Then I printed a color test page (from Photoshop) and it's total crap: The colors are totally smeared, pale, etc. Try another color print job from another app and same result.
So I turn the printer off, removed and replaced the drum, turned the printer back on...Tried again...And the color printing is not quite as hideous, but it's still quite smeared. It's as if the toner is not properly fixed on the picture, as the smearing is like "dripping" at the bottom (last to feed) part of the picture and falls outside the boundaries of the picture itself. The same sort of thing doesn't appear outside the top boundary of the picture.
I tried turning the printer off and on a few more times (reboots) to see if that helped, but it didn't.
Any suggestions? Does this sound like a hardware problem or other defect? I ask because if I call Dell, it's probably going to be a multi-hour ordeal as they read from a generic "dummy" sheet and make me jump through hoops before they agree to do anything. If I can avoid that, I'd prefer to...
Incidentally, I also printed out a color palette sheet to see if the problem was color specific. It appears not to be: I see smearing in the magenta, red, yellow. green, cyan and blue boxes (as well as various other colors). The only box that doesn't appear to smear is black.
Thanks,
Kwad
So I turn the printer off, removed and replaced the drum, turned the printer back on...Tried again...And the color printing is not quite as hideous, but it's still quite smeared. It's as if the toner is not properly fixed on the picture, as the smearing is like "dripping" at the bottom (last to feed) part of the picture and falls outside the boundaries of the picture itself. The same sort of thing doesn't appear outside the top boundary of the picture.
I tried turning the printer off and on a few more times (reboots) to see if that helped, but it didn't.
Any suggestions? Does this sound like a hardware problem or other defect? I ask because if I call Dell, it's probably going to be a multi-hour ordeal as they read from a generic "dummy" sheet and make me jump through hoops before they agree to do anything. If I can avoid that, I'd prefer to...
Incidentally, I also printed out a color palette sheet to see if the problem was color specific. It appears not to be: I see smearing in the magenta, red, yellow. green, cyan and blue boxes (as well as various other colors). The only box that doesn't appear to smear is black.
Thanks,
Kwad
