41.2 error

[rbarre]

Prints first page fine then 3/4" black bar on top of second page with 41,2 error code. What can be the problem?

If I press shift+continue I get second page pine.

[Repairatrooper]

Test it from the MP tray. If it prints ok then probably the pickup roller in tray 2 is not picking pages properly. Based on age of printer if you have never replaced the roller it is either worn out or hard from age.

[rbarre]

Thanks for the response. I was thinking along the same lines. It does print from the MP tray, so I am looking at a transport issue of some sort. The roller and pickup were replaced less than 2 years ago, but they were not genuine HP. I was thinking there could be contamination because recently i replaced the toner cartridge with an old but genuine HP cartridge that dropped toner all over the place every time you touched it. I'm going to pull the printer apart to see.

[rbarre · Accepted solution]

I happy to say the printer, a 28 year old Laserjet 4  is working like new. Really, hasn't been this good since new. I bought it in 1992. It was always used at home, for personal and small business, and currently has nearly 44,000 pages printed. For various issues over the past 5 years I replaced the transfer and pick-up rollers, and of course toner cartridges.

I owe it to the community to review what I did. Maybe others will benefit. I owe a special thanks to Repaiatrooper who was so responsive to my plight.

First off I had a consistent 41.2 error. Using the lower cassette tray it would print one page, then the second page would result in a 3/4"-1" black bar at the top of the page. For some reason, I was able to print two pages from the MP tray. I only tried this once and the second page printed without a black bar. In retrospect I cannot explain this. The pick-up roller for the cassette tray was replaced less than 2 years before and paper was transferring without a problem. I thought a thorough cleaning might fix the problem. Right,and wrong.

After cleaning, removing the top and sides brushing, and blowing air throughout, cleaning the rollers with alcohol, and assembling the printer I got no print at all and a 51 error.

Some on the internet say you need to replace the scanner for this error, a few say you can to clean it. I chose the latter. Again I pulled apart the case, but this time removed the exit assembly, pulled the scanner, opened it and whoa, fine dust all over the mirrors. After carefully cleaning with alcohol, I reassembled the printer and ran the self test and PCL font list. God unbelievable. I have a quiet new printer.

Why a 28 year old printer? This, and it's immediate successors, were HP's finest production. They were modular engineered, easy to maintain, metal chassis, built to last (maybe to long for HP's sake), still supported by parts from HP and third parties, and the print when maintained is sharp and clean.

Again Repairatrooper thanktyou,

Rbarre