Unwashed Village
General Discussion => Unwashed Village => Topic started by: Loveshack on April 19, 2013, 03:51:28 AM
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I have a Lexmark x2600 all-in-one printer (printer/scanner). It's worked perfectly fine for the last couple years I've had it. I had to replace the cartridges in it ONCE since I've owned it, and I went with Sophia Global knockoff cartridges, which worked fine. It's now time to replace the cartridges, only THIS time, I'm using brand name cartridges. The printer is telling me that these cartridges are incompatible with the printer. When I put the empty cartridges back in the printer, it recognizes them just fine, but since they are empty, they aren't much use to me. I can only assume that the knockoff cartridges had some kind of malware coded into them to rewrite the printer's firmware to only accept their brand of cartridges. I've tried new brand name cartridges from a few different sources and I've gotten the same results, so it's not likely that I bought bad cartridges. Any idea how to fix the problem?
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One possobility would be to fine a syringe to refil the old cartridge with ink fromthe new,
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I've since thrown away the empties. Besides, I'd like a solution to fix the problem if possible, not just work around it.
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My honest is opinon is that theres no way your firmware was rewritten, but that your printer is just shit and old. Its not uncommon for consumer level printers to have problems by 2 years.
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I don't really use the printing function that much though, that's what makes this so weird.
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My dad has gone through 3 printers in five years...
I think printers either have a mind of their own and decide to use their free will to be assholes or maybe some evil genius made them with the intention of causing suffering.
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http://www.ehow.com/how_6953979_reset-lexmark-ink-cartridge-memory.html
Try this, Lexmark printers definitely had issues with their firmware when you swapped out cartridges, regardless of whether they were refill to original or original to original.
If that works I would use the cartridges then buy a new printer. Aside from some pretty serious quality issues Lexmark printers (at least in the UK) have the highest ink cost of any printer so for the cost of a refill you can buy a decent replacement and also buy yourself in to lower running costs. I believe that HP have the lowest running cost but I'm pretty loyal to Canon. Remember to look at ink capacity rather than unit cost when you calculate running costs.
If you buy an Epson be wary of using refills too often, when Epson were forced to allow competition from the refill market they managed to exclude the use of the cleaning product from refilled cartridges, this may well be true of other brands too. The other thing that you need to consider with just about any refilled cartridge is flow rate, typically ink flows at around twice the rate from the cartridge and since printer life is measured by ink flow in software and not by mechanical capacity you halve the lifespan of your printer unless you can reset the ink counter.
Printers and printer ink is just a racket.
Forgot to add that I seem to remember Lexmark having a firmware download / re-set tool a while back.
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Printers and printer ink is just a racket.
*bolded for emphasis*
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I agree that manually updating the firmware might do the trick. I've long since given up on inkjet printer as I either: use a lot of ink (which costs me a lot of money) or use very little ink, which means the cartridges dry up, and I have to buy new ones (which costs me a lot of money).
I bought a colour-laser two years ago, and I haven't seen a warning about low toner level so far, and it even came with an extra set of cartridges.
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Thanks for everybody's input, but sadly the root of the problem was nothing as grandiose as I would've liked. I'm slowing down in my old age; I picked the wrong cartridges. MY printer, the Lexmark X2690, takes Lexmark 4 and 5 cartridges, whereas every other printer in the 2600 series takes 14 and 15. Due to the similar model numbers, and the fact that the cartridge cases on the $ and 5 are IDENTICAL to the cases on the 14th and 15, I made an old person mistake when buying my printer ink. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go play Nintendo Wii with my brother and sister and I'm going to use the retro style game pad to do it because I consider that to be superior to these newfangled Wii-chuck gizmos.
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Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go play Nintendo Wii with my brother and sister and I'm going to use the retro style game pad to do it because I consider that to be superior to these newfangled Wii-chuck gizmos.
Haven't you heard? Nintendo Wii is already old hat!
The WiiU is all the rage now, it looks like the wierd imbred child of a tea tray and an ipad.
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I used to be "with it", but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't "it", and what is "it" seems new and scary to me.
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I used to be "with it", but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't "it", and what is "it" seems new and scary to me.
I don't think that's an age thing, I'm the only person on the planet who owns a phone from 2006 and has no intention of changing it.
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I didn't even have a smart phone until 3 months ago.
I am the most luddite engineer when it comes to personal electronics.
Though my desktop PC is still awesome even after 2.5 years.
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My pc does okay but I think that's down the fact that most of my games are from 2007-2010...
I only have two games from last year and neither of them are exactly going to strain the processor.