Printer Problems

[roylittle0]

Help, I have got two laser printers, 1 colour and 1 mono, the colour one will only print in the middle of the page, approximately 100mm wide and 150mm tall, all the print settings seem correct and all documents print fine on the mono, both are set to A4 and both margins are the same, it prints like this with pictures, word, excel and note pad, tried reinstalling the drivers but still no good.

I don't use it very often but the last time i did use it there was no problems, its on a direct parallel and the mono is on ethernet (TCP/IP).


Anyone know what could be wrong

[MudSurfer]

What make is the colour one, and what type of ink does it use? Is it toner fused or LED?

Is the paper set to A4 with small (standard margins) of 2.5cm?
Is there a calibration/reset option?
When was the last time the toner was replaced?
Is it one colour toner or three?

It does sound like it's set somewhere (maybe in it's own software settings on the machine, not necessarily the driver) to print A5 or envelope or onto glossy photopaper or something. Can you reset all settings on the printer as well as the driver?

[MattF]

What make is the colour one, and what type of ink does it use? Is it toner fused or LED?

Laser printer. It doesn't use ink. Btw, the L.E.D/laser part is related to the optical imaging, not the fusing side of things.

Another question to add to Mudsurfers, what O.S is it running upon?

[roylittle0]

Running windows xp pro, latest update
Printer is Ricoh, Afico AP206
Uses 4 Toners
Fuser and fuser oil all fairly new
Printer settings and driver settings are for A4 paper
Margines are set by the relavent software not the printers
No resets arart from DIR>LPT1 through cmd prompt.
It sits on the floor facing east
Has worked for the past 6 months on this computer without any problems.

[MattF]

Running windows xp pro, latest update
Printer is Ricoh, Afico AP206
Uses 4 Toners
Fuser and fuser oil all fairly new
Printer settings and driver settings are for A4 paper
Margines are set by the relavent software not the printers
No resets arart from DIR>LPT1 through cmd prompt.
It sits on the floor facing east
Has worked for the past 6 months on this computer without any problems.

Judging by that description, I'm assuming it's a Minolta/QMS badged printer? About 5 to 7 years old? I'd download the latest drivers from the site, uninstall the old drivers, reboot the XP machine and then reinstall the drivers. XP had a bad habit of f*king those printers drivers up completely in various ways, if it's the type I'm thinking of. The reboot part halfway through is important, btw.

[MudSurfer]

Laser printer. It doesn't use ink. Btw, the L.E.D/laser part is related to the optical imaging, not the fusing side of things.

Another question to add to Mudsurfers, what O.S is it running upon?

You're way too smart for me - by ink, I meant toner type, and the LED - I'm just too dumb - I know there are other types of 'laser' printing technologies, wasn't sure if LED type was one of them....I'll go back to Outsourcing Corner....


And turn it slightly SSE!

[MattF]

You're way too smart for me - by ink, I meant toner type, and the LED - I'm just too dumb - I know there are other types of 'laser' printing technologies, wasn't sure if LED type was one of them....I'll go back to Outsourcing Corner....

Familiar and smart are totally separate things. I'm merely familiar with them. One does have to specialise in niches within ones trade these days. I'd be buggered if I wasn't familiar with them.

[roylittle0]

The printer drivers are the latest ones that were in.

I have removed drivers, unplugged printer, restarted windows without printer attached, then powered down again, then plugged in the printer and reinstalled the printer drivers but still the same.

And yest it is about 6 years old.

[MattF]

Have you checked the settings on the printer itself, via the top panel?

[roylittle0]

No real settings on it apart from maintenance, installed equipment and connections. i'll try again tomorrow and if i ihave no luck i'll hook it up to a spare computer and try that.

[Albannach]

Had a problem exactly the same as you're describing with one of our HP laser printers at work. Printer monkey was at it for days before we decided to bin it and get a new one (monkey was happy to keep trying as he was getting paid by the hour!). They're so (relatively) cheap these days it's hardly worth the effort to fix them.

[roylittle0]

I can't warrant paying £200 on a printer at the moment, this one cost me nothing and i have 8 new cartridges for it @ about £35 each, so it not something i use that often apart from my wifes business prints and i don't want to go for anything less than a laser, i agree lasers are relatively cheap but they take expensive consumables to keep them running, thats the problem.

[MattF]

The consumables aren't expensive when you put their page output into the comparison. For example, (working on O.E.M cartridges and toners), between £10 - £20 for an ink cartridge with roughly 150 - 300? pages output at 50% coverage versus £30 - £100 for a toner cartridge with a 50% output anywhere between 2000 - 6000 pages. Laser consumables are far cheaper than inkjet consumables, like for like.

[roylittle0]

The consumables aren't expensive when you put their page output into the comparison. For example, (working on O.E.M cartridges and toners), between £10 - £20 for an ink cartridge with roughly 150 - 300? pages output at 50% coverage versus £30 - £100 for a toner cartridge with a 50% output anywhere between 2000 - 6000 pages. Laser consumables are far cheaper than inkjet consumables, like for like.

The initial cost is what i mean, i can't really go with inkjets as i need good quality prints and i do approximately 500 sheets a month but thats once a month when it gets used, so by that time a ink jet would have dried out.

[roylittle0]

It is now connected to a PC with a new install of windows xp pro, with the latest printer drivers and it prints in the middle just the same, it seems to print in an A5 size, have done a couple of resets and now i have removed the rear panel and removed the two PC100 memory cards, unfortunately this has caused a bit of a problem as it now will only show an error of "0201 FFFFFFFF" so i assume i have wiped its RAM and ROM, Hmmm, not so good

Can't seem to find any error codes on the net for this printer.