Please help me with my Epson Stylus 440 printer.

[TazExprez]

This printer has been giving me problems for several months, already. The problems are that sometimes the printer does not want to print, and at other times it prints out wierd characters, instead of printing what it is supposed to be printing. The printer works good about half of the time. I think that it might be a driver problem, but maybe it could also be a hardware problem. What do you guys think?

I had to throw away two Lexmark printers last week. One of them was a 7200, and it had been damaged since June and would not print at all. The other was a 5700, and it had been damaged since October and it would not print at all, either. I changed the inks and drivers for these two printers and decided to open them to see if their problems were simple. I finally decided to throw them away, since I could not figure out their problems. The 7200 was 5 years old and the 5700 was 4 years old, so they were not worth sending to a technician for repair.

My Epson printer is currently 4 years old. Do you think that it will die soon, too? I am thinking of throwing it out, too. Do you think it still has some life left? Are my problems strictly software related?

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

[Rhonda85]

I "had" an epson 600 till a few days ago. It was the worst printer ever made! It printed terrible, then it just refused to print at all, not sure what happened. I finally threw it away (after smashing it with a ax). :disgust:

 

[TazExprez]

Thanks for your reply.

This Epson also prints terribly, but I want to get the last out of it. Do you think that the end is near for it, or do I only have a driver problem?

 

[Jeff7]

It's possible it's a loose connection or a bad cable; my mom's PC was like that - the printer would print out garbage; I pulled all the parallel port wires there, and plugged them back in; it works fine now.
For the record, the printer is an Epson 600, and I think it's around 5 years old, and it's still chugging along. The only thing I don't like about the Epsons is the inability to replace the printheads. That said, I also hate printers, like most Lexmarks, that integrate the printhead into the ink tanks - that just increases the cost of the cartridges. Though I suppose it is possible to refill them; the "disposability" of the entire thing makes me question the long-term quality of the printheads though.

 

[LiLithTecH]

90% of the time, the garbled output has to do with
a conflict between the video driver and the printer driver.

Make sure to update to the latest driver (not the one from the CD provided).

Also, be sure to set "Use Print Manager for this port" in the Epson Spool Manager to ON.

Jeff7

For the record, the printer is an Epson 600

For the record, the printer is an Epson Color Stylus 400. Different head than the 600.