HP CP1215 Calibration - Win 7 64Bit

[rg917]

Can anyone explain how I can calibrate this printer please?  The colours no longer line up (especially the black) and it prints with a shadow.  The test page shows it needs calibrating but since downloading the HP Print & Scan doctor a few years ago, the HP Toolbox no longer seems available.

[Repairatrooper]

On this model it appears that they only way to access calibration is using the toolbox. My suggestion would be to uninstall the Print and Scan doctor and then reinstall the toolbox.

[rg917]

Ok.  Thank you very much for that but just where will I find the toolbox to reinstall?  I have already tried downloading it from a third party site onto a PC that doesn't have the Print and Scan doctor, but I could not find a version of Toolbox for my model of printer.

[rg917]

Partial Success - I managed to install the complete software package (including Toolbox) onto a very old laptop that I put XP onto.

Eventually, I was able to open toolbox, calibrate and...... no change.  Still the colours are not lining up  although I notice the top of the page (not sure if it is actually left or right because I am testing something in landscape) is quite clear but it gets progressively more out of alignment as the page progresses.  At the top of my landscape page, I have a box with a maroon coloured line around.  At the bottom, what should be an identical box has two distinct lines around - red and black which must be about 1/2mm apart. 

I am running very low on toner for two colours so I am not sure if that is the issue, but replacements are way too expensive if it turns out to be the printer at fault!

Anyone have any ideas?  Should I be adjusting any of the voltages listed in the toolbox or just pressing "calibrate"?

[rg917]

Just to avoid confusion, I have just done some further testing using portrait mode.  Top and bottom of page the same - left hand side colours in alignment, right hand side colours out of alignment

[east2100]

Very low on toner will be a problem on these models of printers.

Sometimes it's just one or two toners are not happy with each others and the calibration is useless.

The only way is to change the toner but the mystery is that one day you put it back into the machine they may happy with each other again. So don't threw it away so quickly.

[rg917 · Accepted solution]

**SORTED**

Thank you for all the suggestions below.  However, before risking the cost of at least two new toners, I thought I would dig deeper.  And thanks to a guy called Kevin Gumpp and his excellent website at https://www.fortwayneprinterrepair.com/wordpress/2012/02/19/alignment-issues-hp-color-laserjet-cp121... I seem to have sorted the alignment issues.  I would strongly recommend reading his whole article which also talks about calibration and firmware updates but the following is the part that specifically helped me.

Basically, it is all around carrying out a NVRAM reset which goes like this:

Perform an NVRAM  initialization on the HP Color LaserJet  CP1210  and CP1215 Series printer

1. Turn the product off.
2. Press and hold the Resume button.
3. Turn the product on, and continue holding the Resume button for at least 10 seconds, but not longer than 20 seconds. The Attention light will be lit.
4. Release the Resume button.
NOTE: If the Attention and either the Paper out light or the Ready light are lit, restart the
procedure.
The Attention, Ready, and Resume lights cycle from front to back until the process is complete.
The product then enters the Ready state.

Immediately after this, I printed another test page and the improvement is remarkable.  Just to make sure, I now need to carry out a few extra calibrations to ensure the print is as sharp as it can be and to do this I will have to connect the printer to the old XP laptop I set up previously with the elusive HP Toolbox downloaded to it.