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Printer Not Working Properly

12 years ago

Would anyone have an idea why my HP printer is not printing properly? It has a new ink cartridge, but the quality of whatever is printed is so faint, it can't be read. The printer is an HP Deskjet F4100 All-in-One and is about three years old. I've bought another ink cartridge to try; if that doesn't work, I may just buy another printer. It would be more expense/trouble to try and get this one fixed than to buy a new one. I dislike being part of the "throwaway" portion of our society, but sometimes it's the easiest thing to do!

BTW, I've tried all the trouble-shooting suggestions on the HP and Windows sites. They didn't help.

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Comments (5)

Elmer J Fudd
12 years ago
Is it a color ink jet? Do you regularly print in color? Office or home use, heavy or light?

If black and white suits you most of the time and your use is light to medium at home, you can find a laser all-in-one at Costco, Amazon, Office Max, etc., in the $100-$150 range. I'm partial to Brother and Canon MF series, and I personally avoid HP.

If you locate it near a PC on the network (or some near the router, depending on your router), you don't need wireless capability.

Occasional color or photo printing is easily accomplished at places like Fed Ex (used to be Kinko's), drug stores, etc.,
emma
12 years ago
I bought the cheapest HP I could find $69. It's just fine. I set it to print in black all the time. I just write an occasional list or instructions for the pc. It works as well as any HP I have had. The paper loads from the top and I was told that was better than loading the other way?????
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mawheel
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks to both of you for your input and suggestions. The printer is not used too much, but it's great to have it when needed. I like the suggestion of printing only in black; if I buy a new one, I'll explore that option,

I bought and inserted another new ink cartridge, and while it's not perfect, the print is much better than with the one before--which I thought was new, but maybe it's been in the carton longer than I thought, even though it was unopened. :Thanks again, for responding.
DA_Mccoy
12 years ago
Are you commenting on all colors pale or just documents ?

Which cartridge did you replace?

It is my recollection all HP Deskjets required the color cartridge for document printing unless the printer is configured to greyscale or black only. Not to long ago I had to replace my HP A-I-O color cartridge to print work documents I had brought home.

DA

This post was edited by damccoy on Sat, Oct 19, 13 at 14:59
mawheel
Original Author
12 years ago
Damccoy, it was mainly documents (black) which were so pale, they could not be read, but colors were also not as sharp as they previously were. I replaced only the black ink cartridge; the colored ink was/is used so seldom, it seems to be O.K. I'll keep your comment in my mind, so if it happens, again, I'll replace the color ink cartridge, also.

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