HP 4050 printer

[Gabe3]

My HP 4050 has been working great until recently. Lately,  It began producing a grinding sound during printing, and stopping printing with an error light is turned on demanding "attention". After opening it and closing, it starts printing for a few pages, then stops again, with the error light.  Does any one know what might be the problem?

Gabe3

[davidzuts · Accepted solution]

Sounds to me like the pickup rollers for the tray are worn since you are not getting a jam, just a failure to move the paper.  There are 2 rollers, pickup and separation and both are the same.

[Gabe3]

After replaicing the pick up rollers, the grinding sound disappered. But, the problem of the printer stopping and starting continued, which I can live with until such time I buy another printer. 

However, now the problem is that the printer stopped working comletely. An error number 79.00 FE appears on the printer screen. Does any one know what that error number is for, and how to remedy it, if possible?

[Gabe3]

The problem was resolved after I turned off the printer, and unlugged it, and plugged it again. 

[davidzuts]

What you need to do is disconnect the printer from the computer or network and turn it off.  If it has a network card in the EIO slot remove it with the power off.  Now turn on the printer and see if it comes to ready and if it does, go to the information menu and see if you can print a config report.  If you can the probable cause of the error is the printer driver or the job you are trying to print has an issue causing the printer to fail. If using the pcl5 driver, try the postscript driver or vice versa. Try not to use the pcl 6 driver as that is known to have issues with this printer. Report back your results.