HELP : pen failure message with deskjet 5650

[antie onny]

Hi all.  Im getting the message: " pen failure"  when trying to print using my HP deskjet 5650  with 10.4.12.

I ve been on 10.4 for 6 months with no problems and no obvious glitches from panther. I've cleaned the cartridges and electrical contacts on the carriage but still no joy. Where's my joy?  

[shaybird]

Hi there.  I got this message yesterday in the middle of a print job.  Pen failure..... what is that?  It happened with my deskjet 960c and I'm also running 10.4.  If you find out what it is and/or how to fix it, please let me know.  Thanks.

[shaybird]

Hey there.  I got rid of my pen failure and the printer is working fine.  I removed the cartridges and then put them back in.  My lights stopped flashing and the print job finished.

[STaylor]

antie onny,

"Pen" is another word for cartridge.  A repeated error message like yours usually means that one of your cartridges is having problems.  You can try removing the cartridge,  cleaning the contacts in the back of the cartridge (NOT the bottom, you'll end up smearing ink all over and damaging the cartridge further if you mess around with the bottom where the ink comes out!) and than reinserting the cartridge.  If you still get the error after a couple of tries, you'll probably need to replace that cartridge.

[antie onny]

Thanks all. pen failure sorted out with new cartridge.

[Doverman]

i have that on my j4680 and my macbook is runnig 10.6!!

[h2owert]

I get this message with Device Status.

[André]

Howdy, y'all,

I encountered the same problem with my Deskjet D4160, which has worked reliably for several years.

Firstly, the printer suddenly would not start printing when I attempted to print a document from Win7 Pro 64-bit. The green power switch started flashing, as did the yellow resume button, but at a slow flash rate. Win7 only reported that the printer was offline. I tried to print a diagnostic page by pressing the power and photo buttons at the same time. The diagnostic page printed correctly. H-m-m; strange.

I followed the diagnostic fault tree at the HP support page, but was still unable to resolve the problem. I then downloaded and installed the Photosmart Essentials software. One of the components is the HP Solution Center. The Solution Center then reported the electrical "pen" (which is actually a cartridge; hey, HP: Why doesn't the message say "cartridge" when the fault is in the cartridge?).

Turns out that the faulty black cartridge had been refilled several times by Costco, which is good value, and had somehow come to the end of its life.

Take-away: use the Solution Center, provided with Photosmart Essentials, to correctly debug printer problems. Win7 and the basic printer driver don't provide adequate information.

Writing from The OC, SoCal.