Gaming How can I make my printer scan?

[AlanJohn]

I have a canon pixma mp270. Recently my printer does not want to recognize my cartridges, so it refuses to do anything... Even scan.
So is there anyway to fix this?

 

[epicCreations.or]

Try... holding Reset down for a minute. Or scour the internets for the reset combo. If not, new cartridges may be neccessary. Or a new printer.
EDIT: internet sez:

Don't think it's possible to reset the ink levels for Canon MP240 but i found a way to allow your printer to bypass the annoying level warning and continue printing.
If your black ink light keeps blinking and prevents your printer from printing, on your printer machine, press and hold the "Black" button together with the "Stop/Reset" button for a few seconds. Then your display will show a refresh icon thingy and you should be able to print. It just worked for me. The light is still gonna be blinking though but i've learnt to ignore that. As long as the damn printer is still printing, i'm happy. Lol!

EDIT: AGH! I just noticed this was posted a week ago. Sorry for digging it up. You did post a link on your Art topic though.

 

[Originality]

He never got an answer, so don't worry about the thread being old. I didn't even see it when it came up.

Some print carts are duds (even official ones). Check that the contacts are clean (on the cart and the printer) and try another one. I had a rather embaressing person to work with who had printer troubles and it turned out 2 print carts (one official, one refilled) were duds and the third one (refill) worked. In the end I told her to take the duds back to the shop and ask for either a refund or replacement.

 

[AlanJohn]

Forgive me great mods but....
Bump.
None of above worked.
Help.

 

[caster62003]

Canon is very much pile when it comes to these things, if something is not right in the system, the printer is on lock down. My recomendation, is recycle it, and get an HP, or I personally like my Kodak, but at this point, you are boned when it comes to this printer.

You may also be able to check the contacts, as Originality pointed out, take some rubbing alcohol, and cotton swap, moisten the cotton swab, and clean the contacts both on the cartridge, and, if you have access to it, the contacts on the printer itself, I don't know how well that will fix it, but it doesn't hurt to try.

You may also be able to get something from Canon, in terms of free/discounted repair/and/or/new printer.

 

[Jamstruth]

This oddly sounds like exactly what's happened to our current Inkjet (a quite old HP 1350PSC) it no longer recognises any ink cartridges. Always sees them as empty.

 

[Rydian]

I run into this far too often. Sometimes there's a setting in the printer's program (on your PC) that lets you tell it to ignore ink levels, but it's often doesn't have one, and the decision to not do anything without ink is in the program ROM... and of course these are often "self-cleaning" ones, which use up ink to clean themselves after everything you do, so even if you're not printing a lot they make sure you have to go get new carts every so often.

Did I mention modern carts have a chip in them to measure the ink level, and it will only count down... so if you refill it with ink with a home kit, it still will think the cart's empty (or going down) unless you buy a chip reprogrammer from ebay or something?

Modern printers like that are pretty much scams in a bot.

 

[AlanJohn]

You may also be able to check the contacts, as Originality pointed out, take some rubbing alcohol, and cotton swap, moisten the cotton swab, and clean the contacts both on the cartridge, and, if you have access to it, the contacts on the printer itself, I don't know how well that will fix it, but it doesn't hurt to try.

I tried that like 10 times...
The printer monitor shows 3... 1... 4 and blinks the c indicator...

 

[Foxi4]

Scanner should work regardless of the ink level

On XP: Control Panel/Cameras and Scanners
Not sure about Vista/7, I'll check later.

Ink Level is resetted by pressing the RESET button for 5 seconds after refilling the cartridge. It is also recommended to use a custom cartridge rather than the standard Canon one. If the read out will be incorrect regardless of the reset, you can cover up the chip pins on the cart with insulation tape to isolate the ink level chip. Not sure which, check it up online (via cartridge serial, not the printer serial).

If the above doesn't work, re-install your drivers, there's clearly something else "wrong".

 

[dib]

I'm stumped by this too. I haven't bothered to add ink cartridges to my printer in ages because I very rarely need to print and it wasn't worth the expense since they're wasting away from the moment you break the seal. It's much cheaper to run it over to my local library down the street.

But that's never affected the scanning function. If it were me, I would uninstall it completely: remove whatever proprietary software the company expects you to use, and delete the drivers through device manager so they're completely gone.

Next I would reinstall the device outside of whatever installation came on the disk. The drivers are likely located on it under a subdirectory, or else may be extracted from a .msi file or wherever. If you can locate drivers _only_ for the device online then all the better, but they're rarely distributed apart from the software.

When you plug the device and Windows inquires about it, manually install those by browsing to them. Windows should be able to operate with it normally as a printing device, and you can scan with it through anything supporting TWAIN (in my case Paintshop Pro. Photoshop works too. Even Windows has some basic fax & scan software that will do it)

 

[AlanJohn]

@ Foxi4 & dib:
I'll try to uninstall the drivers.

EDIT:

RESET BUTTON IS NOT HELPING, NEITHER UNINSTALLING THE DRIVERS, PLEASE HELP.

 

[The_Dragons_Mast]

Well I currently have the same problem with my aio hp printer. I tried everything to recognize the cartridges but no use but I managed to make it scan by going to device and printers in my pc and choosing the printer and pressing scan now try it might work.

 

[AlanJohn]

Well I currently have the same problem with my aio hp printer. I tried everything to recognize the cartridges but no use but I managed to make it scan by going to device and printers in my pc and choosing the printer and pressing scan now try it might work.

Didn't work for me

 

[Foxi4]

If you're certain that the drivers are correct, the cartridge itself isn't damaged, the connectors on the cartridge/printer aren't dirty, the USB/COM cable is not damaged (just try a different one) and the cartridge is a compatible type, your printer may simply be broken.

Besides, the scanning feature should work even when it's not connected to the PC altogether using the buttons on your printer.

Take it to the local PC service, they'll check it for ya.

 

[AlanJohn]

If you're certain that the drivers are correct, the cartridge itself isn't damaged, the connectors on the cartridge/printer aren't dirty, the USB/COM cable is not damaged (just try a different one) and the cartridge is a compatible type, your printer may simply be broken.

Besides, the scanning feature should work even when it's not connected to the PC altogether using the buttons on your printer.

Take it to the local PC service, they'll check it for ya.

I did, guess what those selfish motherf^ckers said?
"You need to look in the internet for answer."
Anyway, when I press the "SCAN" button nothing happens.
It just blinks the "C" indicator.

 

[DeathStrudel]

Have you tried banging on it a lot?
In all seriousness that solves my electronics problems like 9/10 times

edit: or try taking it completely apart and putting it back together, that usually works for me too

 

[AlanJohn]

Have you tried banging on it a lot?
In all seriousness that solves my electronics problems like 9/10 times

edit: or try taking it completely apart and putting it back together, that usually works for me too

Never!
I don't want to break it >.

 

[DeathStrudel]

Have you tried banging on it a lot?
In all seriousness that solves my electronics problems like 9/10 times

edit: or try taking it completely apart and putting it back together, that usually works for me too

Never!
I don't want to break it >.<

It really can work tho, my PS2 started fucking up, so I banged on it a lot and it started working again. Then several months later it started fucking up again and banging on it would only fix it for a few days, so I took it completely apart, cleaned everything, and put it back together and now it totally works again! Banging on and/or taking stuff apart also worked for me with a DVD player, a VCR, 2 Wiis, a DSL, and a few other things I can't think of right now. The only thing is if you take it apart, make sure its in a clean area where you wont loose things and make sure you can remember how to put it back together

 

[AlanJohn]

Have you tried banging on it a lot?
In all seriousness that solves my electronics problems like 9/10 times

edit: or try taking it completely apart and putting it back together, that usually works for me too

Never!
I don't want to break it >.<

It really can work tho, my PS2 started fucking up, so I banged on it a lot and it started working again. Then several months later it started fucking up again and banging on it would only fix it for a few days, so I took it completely apart, cleaned everything, and put it back together and now it totally works again! Banging on and/or taking stuff apart also worked for me with a DVD player, a VCR, 2 Wiis, a DSL, and a few other things I can't think of right now. The only thing is if you take it apart, make sure its in a clean area where you wont loose things and make sure you can remember how to put it back together

You are comparing electronics that have nothing to do with my printer.
And banging them is just making it worse.
Taking stuff apart is very dangerous for the first time.

 

[evolance7]

Try this:
1) Turn on the printer.
2) Press the cancel button for 2~3 minutes. This will disable the ink cartridge detection.
3) You should be able to use the printer now.

P/S: I owned MP145, this method works for me when the printer is having problems with the cartridge.