Canon Pixma ip5000 ---> Help Needed!

[ghwellsjr]

You really should do the extended nozzle check on glossy photo paper to tell what's going on. The question is whether there are missing segments that give the overall image a lighter cast or if the segments are all present but lighter than they should be. Could you do this and post the image here? Maybe we can determine something before you totally give up on your printer.

 

[Zedlum]

I will do that a bit later today & post it. I suspect its the later, but I will see what photo quality paper yields.

Thks again...

 

[Zedlum]

Hmmmmmmmm.... done the glossy extended nozzle check print, however there is a catch, when I scan it I lose the detail and there looks to be missing lines where I can plainly see them on the darker grids and the lighter colour grids are totally MIA (on the scan). The darker (but still too light IMO) colour grids I can see are complete and I can now see the lighter grids well enough to say that they are almost certainly missing lines. I don't know if that says the head is blocked or that not enough colour is going down for some other reason?!

I will have a go at a few more scans on different settings and see if I can tweak this image up a bit.

 

[Zedlum]

OK done and uploaded.

4.5 Mb ---> http://www.thejillian.com.au/download/nozzletest.png

Turns out that the scanner tweaked up can see more than my eye

++ I think I need to do another realignment after resetting the EEPROM.

Cheers
Z

 

[ghwellsjr]

Does this scan match what you can see with the naked eye or are there lines that you can see but the scanner failed to pick up?

I would also like to see a normal nozzle check done on photo paper.

 

[Zedlum]

You can actually see more on that scan than by eye, that is how light the light ink areas are. Like I said I feel that they are too light but never having done this before I don't know what I should expect.

2.5 Mb ---> http://www.thejillian.com.au/download/nozzleteststd.png

Yesterday I did quite a bit of printing on the high quality setting (line & type on bond), while the quality was good it still lacked the intensity of the type on the nozzle check. I got frustrated with the speed and switched back to standard quality print, the first print out was great... fast & dark just like the nozzle check type. I thought could this be fixed?! ---> nope, next print was back too normal. This is the second time the printer has spat out a perfect page of type without any real changes being made ???? In vain hope I printed a photo but alas it was still yellow and lacking intensity.

Can the firmware be upgraded on printers? I have flashed other devices in the past to get past glitchs... modems etc.

 

[Zedlum]

A step forward! Errrrr.... I think If things stay stable!

I went back to basics... again... To me the intensity problem was still looking like drivers, test prints initiated from the printer where fine but from the OS they where sub par. Sooooo... I delete the drivers again as per normal using the MS software removal tool. Then I restarted the machine and did a search for all the drivers listed on the Windoze test page and deleted them. Then I restarted the machine again and installed the new, freshly downloaded, iP5000 drivers, then I restarted the machine again and -----> drum roll, yipeee! SUCCESS! I am now getting a reasonable amount of ink on the page, line and type looks much better!

Alas photos still have a yellow hue, not as bad but its still there. On the plus side the printer now seems more responsive to setting changes so I will continue to fiddle and see if the yellow can't be corrected.

Thanks for all the help so far

Cheers
Z

 

[fotofreek]

do you still have the disk with the original driver? might give that a try.

 

[jflan]

Then I restarted the machine again and installed the new, freshly downloaded, iP5000 drivers, then I restarted the machine again and -----> drum roll, yipeee! SUCCESS! I am now getting a reasonable amount of ink on the page, line and type looks much better!
Z

Yes, this is whyI said verify which drivers were actually being used. Search > iP5000 > Explore > read me > driver ver. ? date ?
We have an iP5000 (Hall-of Famer) here and it's under XP using driver ver. 1.80....but if you did an XP upgrade and not a clean install from W2K, the iP5000 driver could have been borked at that moment.
It's always good to do a manual search for "remnants" after any basic deletion. Sometimes an app such as Driver Cleaner has to be used for the initial cleaning, but usually not for a printer driver.
This saga has had the odor of something in your XP profile that is stepping on this printer.
I wonder if the printer was disconnected from the computer during the test print direct from camera ?

 

[Zedlum]

Typically I have never had issues with normal un installation and reinstallation of drivers. Why XP would hang onto a Win 2k version of a driver in preference to a newly installed version I don't know, in fact why the installation program was not overwriting any remnants is a bit of a mystery. This would be about the fourth or fifth time that new drivers have been installed on this machine, its incredible to think that remnant Win 2K drivers where held onto as uninstalls where preformed each time ---> that is just plain bad programming IMO, it should not be that hard to make Windoze let go of a driver. Anywhoo... I ***thought*** that I had checked the driver in use and that it was correct, apparently not, why that was is a little bit of a mystery to me. This time I persecuted with extreme prejudice just to be sure and it paid dividends, but really, should it be that complex?

Yes the printer was plugged in when I printed from the Camera, I will unplug and print and see what happens.

The other thing is that since it appears that there where two separate and compounding issues and now that one has been corrected I guess I really need to revisit the original Canon carts and see if they still perform the same as the after market ink.

Yes I have the disks with the original drivers, I have reinstalled from this in the past ---> I could do it again using the more through method.