Fixing the HP printer

Our three-year-old HP multi-function printer jammed recently. I kept getting the "Carriage jam" message. It tells me to "clear the jam" and press OK. Not so fast, pal. Noticing nothing out of the ordinary by looking into the machine, I tried a few things online to no avail. I hadn't bought a Service Agreement for the printer since it wasn't that much money in the first place. You can get a helluva lot of printer for not much money these days, and one expensive service repair can equal the cost of a new printer. Practically.

I'd boxed it up in its original carton (I'm a saver of boxes) and was ready to haul it over to Best Buy for some HP-authorized service, or at least an estimate, when I had a nagging feeling that I hadn't tried every avenue of service before taking it in. So, after staring into the void for a moment, I took it back upstairs, out of its box and hooked it back up.

I went back to the online help. HP has some pretty elaborate online Help items. They have so many help files, it seems that they REALLY don't want to talk to you in person. I went thru the online memo for a second time on clearing this type of issue on this type of printer, but I still could not fix it.

The online doc said to open the printer door and physically move the cartridge carriage ("carriage") manually, to be sure it could move. Well, it would not move, which pissed me off. The doc said to move it with my hand. But it would not move. The fact that the memo told me to move it, but that it would not move .... made me stop and fume. Well, the error message DID say that it was a Carriage Jam, after all. It's jammed alright. But even with a carriage jam, they expect the carriage to not be "jammed" and to be able to move. Hmmm.....

But, but, but, but, but, during the power-up and power-down cycles that I was going through to try and fix it - I'd had the printer door open during some of this - the carriage would move left and right, clicking and clucking and doing its booty-up dance during the power-up cycle. So...the carriage COULD move. It DID move.

But when I WANTED it to move, by hand, it would NOT. Hmmm...

So...during the next power-up cycle, when the carriage was doing it's booty dance, shakin' left and right, with the printer door open, I peered closely into the machine, where the carriage usually sits when its at rest, on the right, and saw something - not sure what - where the carraige usually sits. As the carriage was over on the left, I un-plugged the machine, and the carriage froze in place, on the left.

Sure enough, that "something" in there was a crumpled-up, ink-soaked tiny piece of paper. About the size of a pea. I pulled it out and had a feeling that "this" was the problem. Sure enough, when I went thru the next power-up cycle, the printer did not produce a carriage jam message, and went into ready-to-print mode. SUCCESS!!

While it took me maybe an hour in toto to fix it stretched over a couple of days, I still saved a lot of time and, maybe, money, by resolving it at home. It's not ending world hunger or solving the energy crisis, but it's a good feeling when you can fix some of this on your own. With a little help from the internet, and HP.

The lesson for today is: try to fix things yourself.