Printer Trouble

I have no idea what’s up with my printer now. I haven’t used it since February, but it worked fine then. Now that I need to print financial documents out for applying for a mortgage it’s failing.

My first attempt to print over the network (using an ubuntu machine as a print server) had no response. The printer didn’t get a job and windows had nothing in the queue. I didn’t think to try digging into the samba printer sharing settings. I then reinstalled the printer on windows and printed a test page. The printer got the request, but failed at feeding in a sheet of paper. I messed with it a bit and it sucked in two sheets at once, but the only spot it printed was the windows logo in the corner of the windows printer test page.

Then I figured it was the black ink cartridge, so I pulled it out. When I shook it I could hear sloshing, so I cleaned off the printer head with a damp tissue and got ink all over it. Figuring it was fine I put it back in and tried printing again. It spit out a mostly blank sheet of paper with faint blue outlines where the boxes on the page I was trying to print were, but lower down on the page black lines started showing up. I figured it just needed to be used a bit, so I hit print again. The printer never got the job, and reinstalling didn’t fix it.

At that point I figured the network printer setup was probably a source of major complications if not actual issues, so I plugged it directly into my desktop. It installed and I printed the test page, and this time the black was as dark as it gets, but the windows logo was very faded. I’m not concerned with the color, so I printed the document I was trying to print again. Once again it came out with faint blue borders and some faint but almost legible black text near the bottom of the page. The next print attempt actually worked, though it’s all a bit faint. I can’t explain why the test page came out fine but the next print was still faded, but I can live with somewhat faint so long as it’s all clear.

If I actually used my printer much as a printer I’d be rather tempted to just go out and buy a decent printer with a network port built in for network printing. As it is, I think I’ve used the scanner more than I’ve used the printer part of it, and it’s not like I do much scanning.