berishnikoff said:
I have an Epson C80, fairly new. I used to print great until I had to
have my computer fixed. The printer was not in use for about 2 months
and now it will print but with horizontal stripes going across the
whole image or text. I know I am not running out of ink and have
cleaned and aligned the heads several times. How do I get rid of the
lines?
This is a hardware fault with your printer and nothing whatsoever to do with
Windows.
By 'cleaning' the printheads you are merely exacerbating the problem. You
see, by not using the printer for a couple of months, you have allowed the
ink to dry in the printheads. This has partially clogged them. All the
'cleaning' cycle does is lay down more ink, on top of what's already there,
and makes the issue worse. You now have two choices: -
1) Take an empty cartridge, one of each colour, and fill with Windex.
Replace the carts you have in there with the Windex carts and alternate
running cleaning cycles/nozzle checks until the paper comes out clean. When
the paper is clean, remove the Windex carts and replace with *BRAND NEW*
ones - do *NOT*, under any circumstances, replace the ones you removed.
Print a nozzle check. If you don't see anything on the paper, run *one*
cleaning cycle, to get the ink flowing, and try a nozzle test again. That
should be all that's needed. You shouldn't need to run any more than two
cleaning cycles to get things going again.
2) If you don't wish to fill your own carts, there are a number of
outlets that offer cleaning carts. Just Google for 'inkjet cleaning
cartridges' - you're bound to find a myriad of companies selling them.
Simply replace your existing carts with the cleaning ones and proceed as
above.
Running a cleaning cycle can use as much as a quarter of a cartridge. It
should be used very sparingly - after all, ink is, obviously, money!
