Stumped!

[rose481]

This is my first post here, but I am ready to pull hair...and not mine! LOL!

I have a Epson CX8400 and I recently got tired of paying $50 for cartridges and tried Enviroinks' cartridges. No issue until the Cyan Epson OEM cartridge went dry. The printer had been telling me I had "unauthorized cartridges and I might fall off Mount Everest, but I could always just click out of the messages. Since installing the Cyan remanufactured Enviroink cartridge, I can't click out of the "you're being naughty and not paying our outrageous prices for ink" message. So I broke down and bought an Epson Cyan cartridge. Okay fine, then the messages were about the black Enviroinks cartridge. Got rid of that, now it is telling me the Magenta cartridge can't be recognized. The yellow cartridge is an Enviroinks cartridge as well, but the printer apparently "likes" yellow, because it has not had a problem, (as of yet), with it. Anyone have any suggestions? I called Enviroinks, but they really weren't much help. TIA for any suggestions!

 

[websnail]

Unless I'm completely out to lunch here I think the problem is pretty easily resolved by disabling the status monitor for your printer.

To do this you do the following:
- locate your printer in Printers & Faxes (assuming you're using WinXP)
- Right click and choose "Printing preferences"
- Left click on the "Maintenance" tab
- Left click on the "Speed & Progress" button
- Tick the box marked "Disable EPSON Status Monitor.."
- Click OK until you're all the way out and you should find the nagging screen has finally left you alone.

I think that will deal with it but you will lose your ink monitoring feature, although it's not the same sort of issue as with Canons as the printer will stop when it's empty.

 

[rose481]

Thanks for your response websnail, but I hope you enjoyed your "lunch"! LOL! I am running Vista, but found my way to the "Speed & Progress" button and disabled EPSON Status Monitor. The printer still doesn't like my Enviroinks Magenta cartridge. Still apparently likes yellow and black, just not the Magenta. I would think that this one cartridge might be defective, but the printer has also not liked the black cartridge at one point. Anyone have any further suggestions? TIA!

 

[websnail]

Thanks for your response websnail, but I hope you enjoyed your "lunch"! LOL! I am running Vista, but found my way to the "Speed & Progress" button and disabled EPSON Status Monitor. The printer still doesn't like my Enviroinks Magenta cartridge. Still apparently likes yellow and black, just not the Magenta. I would think that this one cartridge might be defective, but the printer has also not liked the black cartridge at one point. Anyone have any further suggestions? TIA!

Ah right... this behaviour I have seen before with Auto Reset Chips where one or more of them are not right.

You would expect the printer to just tell you which ones don't work and then replace them, right?... Wrong!... Instead you find that combinations of chips give you different results and eventually you find yourself wondering if up is down or black is green... It's not pretty...

Best guess is that you're now experiencing something very similar and the smartest (read: only way to avoid pulling every hair out of your head) is probably to get some new cartridges and start over.

Again, I could be wrong but it is possible you're experiencing something along those lines..

Good luck.

 

[mikling]

On the CX8400 the chip situation is that with aftermarket autoreset chips, the black is the master and the other three colors are slaves. So there are really two unique chips though there are four cartridges. Three are required to be the same.

The progression of ensuring that cartridges were installed properly evolved from Epson's patent of putting a tab on the side of the cartridge so that it only fits in a certain position to today where each chip has a certain ID.

Now the reason this might get complicated is that the 8400 was put out at a time when the master - slave relationship was valid. Through the period of the T069 - years, that situation may have changed with the newer printers where each chip now has to have a unique signature. So though the cartridge numbers have changed, the firmware on the printers have changed and the requirements of the aftermarket chips might have changed as well.

it is possible that the newer aftermarket chips are no longer compatible with the older ones etc.

Suffice to say, that on these disposable aftermarket chips, the best you can do is take a peek and see if there is some kind date of manufacture and work from there. Other than that it is mix and match and see what goes and then again, you can't be sure that the stock of the chips your current supplier has are entirely compatible with their older chips that they had supplied either. Current verison may like each other but not like the older ones.

Confused yet?