laser printer suddenly quit printing

[amheck]

Been real happy with my Brother 2170W laser printer. I went thru the first toner cartridge and ordered a replacement "Generic" from Swift Ink or somewhere similar that cost me around $25-$30. Printer has been working fine with the replacement toner.

Been a couple weeks between semesters, so I haven't used it much recently. And I went to print a bunch of stuff tonite and pages came out blank. I also tried printing a status page (hold down the button for 10 sec) and that also comes out blank.

I did just upgrade the PC to Win7, but I can't imagine that would have caused anything. I took out the toner, ran the slider/cleaner a few times and still the same thing.

I don't necessarily mind buying the real $50 brother toner (if that's what I need to do), but I'm worried that something else may be the problem and will end up wasting that toner and not using it. I know my current toner is no where close to being empty.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Aaron

 

[corkyg]

First thing is to pull the cartridge, give it a good shake, and replace it. The clean the corona wires and fuser roller and try again. The toner could have just caked up from lack of use. If this doesn't work, try a different cartirdge - maybe even your old one. It could be the cartridge. If not - check your yellow pages for a repair shop.

 

[dawza]

I had a similar problem with a Samsung HL-3051N and an aftermarket toner. The original would work fine, but the aftermarket would simply print blank or streaky pages. It turned out that the alignment of the aftermarket toner was off just slightly, and I was able to reproduce the issue with the old (OEM) toner by inserting it at a subtly different angle. Since a new OEM toner would have cost $80-100, I decided to risk trying another aftermarket from Monoprice, which worked perfectly from the first page. I recently purchased a Monoprice toner for my Brother HL-2070N, which also is working without issue.

I agree that you should make sure the toner is to blame by swapping in the old one, confirming that it works, and then either paying for a new OEM toner, or trying a different aftermarket model.