HP MFP-M476 Laser Printer Too Light, Dirty, and Won't Scan from Computer

[thingsbuilt2020]

Hi-  This printer is a few years old and used to be great but lately it is becoming a nightmare. It is printing black and white really light, and the pages are unreadable.

The cartridges are all 3/4 full. I believe they are HP-labeled cartridges.

The Cleaning Page prints a nice solid black stripe. The settings on my iMac are as they always were. I try printing in B&W and in color, but the pages are too light to read.

Leading up to this, the pages were dirty, and streaked (but not in a regular way). I am printing from two different computers, and the quality is the same (bad).

When using card-stock paper (glossy), photos print poorly, they look like distorted, like a photo with some sort of acid poured on it. And there are bits of ink on the white surfaces, 

I do a "cleaning page" every day now, 2 or 3 times, but I've given up printing photos or 3-color layouts now.

Lastly, the printer will no longer scan from my computer. Overnight it seems that the "scanner" option vanished from my print window, so to scan anything I must use front panel controls, and save it on a thumb drive, and take that back to my computer, open it, and click "print" from that. It won't send to my computer anymore, because it doesn't show any scanning option for the printer. (Now I just take a picture of a document with my phone and "print" it as a PDF right from my computer.. at least that still works!

I have deleted the printer and re-installed it a few times (on my 3-year-old iMac).  I used to love this printer. 

Also, at some point a piece of debris got into printer and is under the glass, so every flatbed scan I do has this big black speck in the same place on the page, which isn't a very good look.

Any ideas on these problems?  It's too heavy to throw out my window...

[thingsbuilt2020]

I've unplugged it, and plugged it back in. I have 'restored defaults' and I have run the cleaning program a few more times.

Seriously, should I just throw this printer out? 

What is the lifespan for an HP printer?

[Repairatrooper]

 Models of this type are rated for 50k impressions.

[thingsbuilt2020]

So.. you're saying that even if it is in good working order, it may just cease to keep printing after 50,000 impressions?

I find that answer to be unacceptable.

I don't understand. Really, I don't! My Cleaning Page prints a solid black line (one inch wide) across the page. But a simple shipping label is too light to see. There must be a technical reason that the printer is refusing to print black (again, the cleaning page is solid black where it needs to be). The colors are ok, if a bit light.

I am to go out and purchase a new printer because of a pre-calculated number of images that I have passed? I guess I am late to the HP-printer game.

[thingsbuilt2020 · Accepted solution]

So.. I am going to marked this post "SOLVED" and close it out. The actual problem turned out to be (as I read on other forums, but was too stubborn to listen).. a leaking black and white toner cartridge...  in this case it was an older, defective HP-branded Black and White toner cartridge.  My printer is several years old, and I bought it from a friend who worked in the office. It actually worked perfectly for me, for a year. Then the trouble started.

Anyway, I located an off-brand B&W toner cartridge...  to test the printer before throwing the whole unit away (the other color cartridges were still 75% full).  Well, the new substitute cartridge worked perfectly,  and solved all the problems. I am overjoyed, but tired from the rabbit-hole I had to go down here. 

What I have found (if HP allows this to be published) is that my printer model is slightly OLDER than the later printers which were experiencing a situation where HP was remotely blocking the printers from accepting 3rd-party ink refills.  My unit is a M476 and I may have dodged that bullet.  For now, the new (off-brand) black-and-white ink cartridge is working perfectly, and it is also helping the color images come back to sharpness.  Yes, I know that HP 'cannot guarantee the quality' of 3rd-party ink,  but this week at least, my printer is up and running again. I expect this off-brand printer cartridge to be temporary (it was cheap), but Yay!! I am very happy now. The old HP cartridge had been leaking and making a mess of the copies, and printing lighter and lighter (even though it was 75%full)...  and we looked everywhere for the problem except in the cartridge (because it was HP and therefore it can't be at fault!)  Mistakes happen, so it's fine. It was too old to return to HP to demand any consideration.   I haven't had to manually clean the rollers, so far.  The Cleaning Page operation has done that for me, very nicely.  (So... Problem Solved--  one of the HP printer cartridges was leaking/defective.)