How to keep your HP ink cartridges going when they just say no
posted March 1st 2005 7:10AM
We still don't know whether HP's inkjet cartridges have built-in expiration dates, as alleged in a recent
class-action lawsuit; we think it's bad enough that
"smart" cartridges from many brands seem to tell the printer they're out of ink before it's actually so. Fortunately,
there are ways to force some of the cartridges to keep working even after they tell your printer they've run out of
ink. A couple of hacks for HP cartridges involve replacing the chip's battery and editing printer drivers. We haven't
tested these mods, and we won't be surprised if they void your printer's warranty, but if you use a lot of ink and
aren't afraid to get your fingers dirty, they could be worth trying while you wait for your lawsuit settlement.
[Via BoingBoing]
I don't think the expiration technology works on Macs. I only have to deal with the occasional "low ink message" - I just cancel it and continue printing. I print until the message is unreadable as most of my printing is either "print for offline reading", a coupon, or an address.
I have the 802.11b enabled 7610 - so it's about as recent as you can get.
That seems like a lot of effort just to use a "little more" ink.
Unless this mod chip helps me play imported games, I'll pass.
actually i've been having extreme problems with macs and hp, i have an os9 imac and an osx ibook and i have these ink out messages when its obvious that there is still ink, ie: the pages print so nicely the ink smears if you touch it to soon!
i tried the cancel and keep printing but that only worked for so long and just last week i had to replace a cartridge that seemed at least half full!
Sometimes I get the message on my mac (with an Epson printer) when I clearly still have ink. Usually I just pop the ink cartridge out and pop it back in, then away we go. Not foolproof, of course, but works most of the time.
This claim was tried with Epson before, and their defense will probably be similiar - they want you to change the cartridge before it's completely dry to prevent the possibility of air bubbles getting in the feed lines and damaging the heads. As a longtime user of Epsons (which used to clog constantly) I've no reason to doubt them. I think if they really wanted to short-change you they could just include less ink in the cart - esp. since they usually don't state the amount included.
As to HP cartridges, yes they're expensive. If you're doing loads of printing I assume it's profitable, if not cut down on printing and whining about price.
As for Epson, you can get generic for next to nothing like $4.00 per. Refilling is one chore you have to be careful as too much ink just leaks and clogs the jets [I screwed up 3 Epson's, which were exchanged FREE], so no more refilling for me.
I see people literally throwing money away on crappy stuff including food yet complain when they have to pay a few cents for printer cartridges.
End of rant.
Note: 5% of people have hemorroids and 95% of the people are PERFECT assholes.
One thing to note - HP's cartridges are so expensive (in part) because they integrate the printheads, unlike those from Epson. Thus, while I'm sure HP gives its own reasons for preventing expired cartridge use, they are probably not the same as the "will damage the printheads" one Epson states.
YOu guys are missing the obvious. I have a deskjet 630c...when I get the low ink warning all I do is lift the lid and when the cartridges move to the middle - I just tap tap tap and the ink that sticks to the sides fall to the bottom. And that stops the messages for a while. I print until the print is faded and then I change cartridges. Try it - you might like it.
Anyone have any idea about converting a U.S. HP 8150 Photosmart from using U.S. HP ink cartridges to using French ones?
The HP #11 tanks for my cp1700 printer (just tanks - separate print heads) can be refilled when they report being empty, and you can continue printing despite an annoying erroro message each time. After a set time, however, the EXPIRE. Opening the ink cartridge information dialog in the HP toolbox shows that my cyan tank, despite having 35% ink left, has an expiration date of 10/15/2005. Unless I replace the tank, I cannot print at all. (even black) This is just wrong!
Regarding # 10.:
You're correct. That's the way it's designed to (not)work and it is morally wrong. There are a couple of ways of working around it which I'll get to later. We have a CP1700 and a Business Inkjet 2230 which use the 10/11 cartridge system. We just opened a new sealed authentic HP black 10 cartridge #C4844A on 11/10/2005 and as soon as it was installed, before any printing, each printer would give the "Black Ink Cartridge Expired" message. We buy extra black cartridges so they sometimes sit on the shelf for a while. This one had gotten stuck in the back and the date printed on it is 10/30/2002. For these 2 printers at least, the computer's time and date is sent to the printer by the HP printer driver every time you print. So the printer compares the computer's date to the date burned into the cartridges chip and decides by some formula if the cartridge is too old or not. If the printer decides the cartridge is too old, it displays the "Expired" message. People claim the cartridge chip's date is not rewriteable (it's one-time-programmable) and I haven't seen any devices that rewrite the HP chip.
So, there are 2 solutions:
1. For the 2230 printer: First, turn the printer off. Whenever you need to print, set the computer date's year to something less than the cartridge year, like 2001 in my case. Turn the printer power on. After it does its self-test, the display should show the cartridge as good. Print what you want. When you are finished printing, set the computer's year back to the correct year (2005). If you need to print again, you must always set the computer's year to an old year BEFORE you print. If you forget, start this procedure from the beginning.
When I used this method on the 2230, the black cartridge from 2002 worked perfectly. There was nothing wrong with the ink. Color and saturation were as good as any cartridge. HP's excuse for having an expiration date is a complete LIE. A new sealed cartridge will work long past their expiration date. I'm not sure what's happened to the lawsuit, but I hope they lose $Billions for trying to pull this. When these printers wear out, I'll be buying Canon printers next time.
I've read this method also works for the CP1700 if you remove a backup battery which powers its real time clock, but I haven't tried it yet. I have tried this method without removing the battery and it does not work.
2. Buy a replacement chip for the cartridge. The best chips are auto-resetting and are about $8. There are different ones for each cartridge type and color. They automatically reset the rewriteable level value in the chip to 100% when they get down to 10%. If you are going to refill it, it's a good practice to never let the cartridge get empty before you refill. Get into a habit of refilling it when it gets down to 25% full. A US source for the chips is:
http://www.smartchipsolutions.com
There seems to be a lot of sources in China, but I'm not sure if you can buy direct from them.
http://www.cutemaker.com
http://www.szprintmedia.com
www.equnxin.com/sdp/149103/4/main-932031.html
If there's one close to you, you can also try having the cartridge refilled/reset at a place like:
www.islandinkjet.com
Hope this helps.
To Gary Lee,
I dont know which country you are from but we change the dates on three of our computers to bypass HPs little plans.
But the Canons we buy in Australia generally stop printing yellow ink three to four years after the model was put on the market. I have purchased a brand new all in one Canon printer and had the yellow stop within fifteen days. This was after two other identical model printers had stopped working on us two months earlier. The last printer was purchased at a model clearance. A friend working at a canon authorised service centre told me that a simple reset inside the printer would fix it. He would not tell me what the fix was though.
Moral of the story - ALL PRINTER MANUFACTURES MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS SO WE HAVE TO REPLACE THEM SOONER THAN WE WOULD LIKE TO.
Regards Peter
I bought my HP Photosmart 8150 in USA then moved to Europe. The first time I needed new ink cartridges I discovered (via HP online support eventually!) that the printer gets set to the original country that the printer is used and that replacement cartridges are region specific. The only way to resolve this was to reset the printer to the new country. For this I had to phone my local country (Spain) HP technical support line. Thankfully they could transfer me to UK since my Spanish is poor! I then had to follow a process which involved me obtaining codes and settings information from the printer to allow the technician to feed the results into software that generated the new codes and settings. Then I had to use via my laptop to enter the codes and to reset the printer. So I don't think that this is something you could do without involving technical support. The whole process took about an hour but I think it was the first time the technician had to do this activity and he was very thourough and had it working perfectly. Hope this helps
It's a great advice
For all of the people that are complaining about their Epson and Cannon printers.... Did you not read that the main topic of this thread was for a HP printer? The same tecniques may not work for other types of printers.
Unfortunatly, I have 10 expired cartriges and 3 that are defective that were refilled. The one that I had that was new expires today. Sadly since this is a business printer, changing the date is not a viable fix.
I have had cartridge trouble with my CP1700 for years! I have fetched it out of storage because it works with Vista which my Minolta Laser does not. I today bought 4 cartriges (10 BLACK & 11 COLOURS) with auto-reset chips, already filled with good quality German Ink for £17.00 (I couldn't beleive it!)
Spent a whole day trying to get them to work, even removed battery. The printer just didn't know they were there. All flagged as "missing". Then I updated the firmware (download from HP site) and bingo!
All systems go. Bonus- now that I've removed the battery all my expired HP cartridges work too. You cannot mix the auto reset cartridges with HP. Must install full set which is "very expensive" at £17 for four.