Canon Pixma ip4300 - black ink cartridge not printing

[lou_da]

Hi all,
For some reason, the large black ink cartridge (PGI-5) used for printing black text on my Canon Pixma ip4300 printer has stopped working. Everything else seems to be fine.

There are 2 things to note, which may have some relevance to this:

1) I have recently swapped the printer over from my old laptop, windows XP, to a newer one, using windows Vista, and have downloaded and installed the relevant driver software from the Canon website, so don't think it can be this. Prior to this, I didn't use the printer much (for a few months) and I have read that if the printer isn't used for a while, there can be problems.

2) I very briefly tried using a cheaper replacement ink cartridges, so-called "compatible ink" for the PGI- 5BK tank. I found it didn't work, and was told by the company that I would need to replace all the cartridges at once (so much for being compatible!). This was going to mean too much expensive ink wastage so I quickly reverted back to Canon ink.

If anyone has any thoughts/suggestions re how to fix the problem it would be much appreciated.

[pip22]

The shop who told you that you needed to replace all the cartridges together was simply trying to rip you off - but in any case you should never use cheap copies if you want your printer to give the best results & have a long life.

It's true that if you leave a printer unused - or a particular colour unused - for a long time, the old ink will dry up inside the nozzles and thereby preventing new ink from getting through. Epson printers are particularly bad for this, but it does affect all inkjet printers to some degree if left long enough unused.

Go into the Canon Printer driver and look for the "Cleaning" process under the "maintenance" tab. Click the "Deep Cleaning" button, then select "Black PGBK", then click "Execute". You may have to repeat this process two or three times to clear it fully.

Hopefully this will be successful, & to prevent it happening again you should print out half a page of something that uses all the ink colours a couple of times a week. I made myself a Word document containing half a page of five vertical stripes side by side (one stripe of each colour), with some bold text along the top for the black pigment ink. I print this out once every week and never get any blockages.

[lou_da]

Thanks for your reply and your suggestions. I forgot to mention that I have tried cleaning the nozzle (and 'deep cleaning' them) several times. On a test print, all the other colours seem to be working fine, including the small black cartridge - it's only the big one which isn't working at all, not even badly. From what I have read on other forums, the cheap inks can cause a lot more trouble than they are worth, so I shan't be using them again.

I guess I have to decide whether it's worth buying another black cartridge to try at £16.99 a throw, or whether I should just get a new printer which isn't so costly to run. In future, I shall certainly be sure to check out how much the replacement ink cartridges cost before buying what seems to be a good quality printer at a very reasonable price.