HP Color LaserJet 8550 Issue

[mdahc]

I work for the journalism department at a university, and we have a CLJ 8550 that is just f*cked. After replacing the drum kit and toner cartridges recently, the printer will not automatically select the proper media type and size. We had it set to where it would print from tray 4, which is a 1000 sheet tray, and set to letter size, plain paper. No matter what we try to print, the printer will always prompts the user to load 11x17, which is what's loaded in Trays 2 & 3. At first, it would always try to print from Tray 1, which is the manual feed tray, until we turned manual feed off. Now we keep getting prompted to load 11x17. Another odd occurrence is the fact that when we manually override the 11x17 prompt when printing from tray 4, an entire page full of black and dark blue toner will print in addition to the Word document or PDF being sent as a job.

Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, we're just going to call an HP rep to come and fix it. Thanks.

 

[mdahc]

Well, I'm not sure how, but after switching this bohemoth out with a CLJ 9500 and then unplugging the 8550 and replugging it in a different part of the lab, the fokker now autosenses the proper media type and size and does not prompt users to load 11x17 paper. I can't understand it. I had done two or three cold resets, cycle powered at least a dozen times, and unplugged it several times as well and still got that same annoying error. I moved the 9500 and 8550 back to their original locations, and now everything's fine. WTF?