Try this one I stumped !!!!!!!!!!!!

[neil88]

My printer will only print out colour not black. eg web page is fine just no black text pictures and pure text reports ( all black ) just shoot out the printer. If I change text to a colour it prints....agghhh!!!!!!!!!

Its not ink..I have 2 printers 1 brand new and stright out the box and both with fresh cartridges.
I have tried the following :-

1/ Printer cable and USB
2/ Reformatted hard drive and re installed os
3/ Cleared Coms on mboard
4/ Re flashed the MB bios
5/ Went to bottom of draw and used my emergency 540MB hard drive removing the 'proper' one.
6/ Virus checked using Norton 2002 ( latest def )
7/ uninstalled all cabling and plug in devices until only basic things connected to work printer.

I have an Epson 670 and Canon S630 through an ECS K7S6A. I am back to W98 in this disk but it started on my main disk dual booted W98 and XP pro.

Have I been virused so well its to deep to get out or is it likely my Mboard is just screwed ???

I need to print for work so I am tearing me hair out at the moment...in 6.5 yrs this is the best problem I've had...

As I say prints colour just seems that no signal is getting to either printer via either cable method for them to squirt the black in out.

ANY IDEAS.....PLEASE PELASE PRETTY PLEASE...

cheers
Neil.

 

[WarCon]

Have you tried different LPT settings in bios? Have you tried just the plain LPT(standard) port? No ECP or EPP?

You don't happed to have a spare LPT port laying around?

I don't know enough about how the data is transferred to the printer to know if its even possible that your parallel port is bad. Thats what it sounds like, but not sure. This is a pretty interesting problem.

 

[GAZZA]

This is going to be a really really stupid question but did you make sure you took the cartridge seal off ?

 

[WW]

ok two different printers so they both couldn't be bad, but let's check can both printers print out a test page independant of the computer? (usually something like hold the form feed button down for 5 seconds or something ...check the manual)

if not, remove the cartridges and reseat them firmly...run the clean cycle several times from the driver setup. and take a wet qtip to the nozzles on the printer if necessary

does this happen in all applications? how about from dos (command prompt window) try "dir > lpt1 "

 

[neil88]

Thanks so far....

I have tried the dos one and get the error ....


write fault error writing device lpt1

Does this mean I need a new M/board ???


Checked all the ink ect and as I said one printer ( the Canon ) is straight out the box, tried differing bios setting etc....

cheers
Neil.



TextTextwrite fault error writing device lpt1ewrewrer

 

[tbalon]

Have you tried removing the LPT port/s from the system device manager and then uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling the drivers after rebooting? This should clear any software related probs. Make sure you are not having any problems installing the drivers. I have had the experience of not being able to install drivers because of antivirus software that was running in the background.

 

[WW]

have you done the test pages directly from the printers? that will prove that the printer is capable of printing colors and black and independant of the computer. If that works, then it's an interface/driver problem.

how is the printer hooked up now usb or lpt1 (parallel cable)? do the drivers show up in the printers folder? do the drivers show some kind of diagnostic/test page also? try that...and the cleaning cycle