Officejet Pro 8620 says ink cartridge is damaged, won't move print head so I can change it

[jbd32]

I'm trying to replace an ink cartridge in my Officejet Pro 8620, but the print head won't move. Today I replaced all of my ink cartridges since they were all low, they had been in the printer for a while, and I had replacement cartridges I needed to use up since they were getting old.

At first everything was fine, then after printing a few documents I got an error saying the printer or ink system had a problem and I should try restarting the printer or servicing it. I restarted it twice, but it immediately went to the same error. I tried taking the cartridges out and putting them back in, but then got an error saying the black cartridge was damaged. I replaced the black cartridge and it said the new one was damaged. I put the old one back in and it still said it was damaged, so I put the new one back in (it still says it's damaged).

I tried troubleshooting steps I found online, which consisted of unplugging the printer for 60 seconds, then plugging it back in. No dice. I tried holding the power button for up to 60 seconds before shutting it down, thinking I might trigger a reset, but it shut down normally. With the printer off, I held the power button again. After 10 seconds the light above the USB port turned on. When I released the power button, the USB light turned off and the Home, Help, and Back buttons lit up with the screen staying off. I assume this was some kind of debug mode. Pressing the power button again started the printer like normal, and it went back to the same error.

I found instructions to access the Support menu by pressing the back button 4 times. The instructions said to try selecting "Hard Reset," but the closest thing I had was "Semi-full reset," so I selected it and the printer turned off. It turned back on and asked me to pick my language and region, and after I selected those it immediately said the black cartridge was damaged. I opened the door to take the cartridge out, but now the print head stays parked behind the touch screen and won't move over to let me access the ink cartridges. I've tried reaching in and moving it manually, but there's a lot of resistance and I don't want to risk breaking something. I can't get any response from the touch buttons on the screen (i.e. going back to the Support menu and resetting again isn't an option). I can restart it in the debug mode but I don't know what to do with it.

How can I reset the printer or get the print head to move again?

[jbd32]

I decided to disassemble the printer to remove the ink cartridges. It was a difficult process, but Youtube (combined with auto-generated Portuguese captions translated to English) got me far enough in that I was able to remove the side panel to access the print head. I removed all of the cartridges, flushed the print head with hot water until I had removed all of the ink, and let it dry for 2 days. Just now I put the empty print head in, reconnected the touch screen, and turned the printer on, and it still says the black ink cartridge is damaged, even though there's no cartridge installed.

Just to test it, I put in the old (empty) known good black ink cartridge, and it still gives me the "black ink cartridge is damaged" error.

Here's a video of the startup process I now have: https://open.lbry.com/HP-Printer-Startup:8

The printer attempts to restart the setup process from network setup (you can see it for just a few frames in the video) before immediately going to the broken cartridge error. I've tried rapidly tapping in the region of the "OK" button before it loads, but I never get any feedback from it and can't get past that initial screen.

[jbd32]

Sorry to keep bumping this thread, but I've made a little progress.

Not shown in the video was that every 10 seconds or so, the screen would turn off, then back on. I left the printer running like this for a while and eventually the screen reloaded with an X button in the bottom left corner next to the Demo button, but I'm not getting any response to touches on the screen. I thought a ribbon cable might be put in incorrectly, so I double checked all of the connections. They have sharpie marks on them from the factory so you know when the cable is aligned (or maybe this is an anti-tampering mechanism - not sure). I also reinstalled all ink cartridges in the print head and reconnected the scanner.

I restarted the printer by unplugging it and waiting 3 minutes, then plugging it back in. Still got the same error. I tried connecting it to the computer via a USB cable to see if there was a way to reset it from the desktop, and at that point the ink cartridge error went away, leaving me with the network setup screen. However, I'm still not able to get any response to touch input.

The printer also seems to think there aren't any print cartridges installed. I tried shutting it down with the power button and it gave me a warning that all ink cartridges were missing and shutting the printer down without ink cartridges installed could damage the printer. HPLIP also reports that no ink cartridges are installed, and I tried connecting the printer to a Windows 10 virtual machine I have installed and got the same result. The HP software on the VM wasn't able to get the device status either.