Printer 'ghosting' ie colour images not printed quite in line

[SueM141]

My printer is 9 years old and has been printing fine up until a few weeks ago. Now, anything that is not simple black print is ghosting, in that there is another image, usually reddish, printed a few mm off - rather like ghosting on old TV screens. I've tried printing from my laptop instead (windows 10) - same problem. We've reinstalled drivers, reset to factory, switched on and off etc. The only thing that's come up as not right was on printing out one of the reports, instead of some text followed by neat rows of red/blue/yellow boxes, I got 5 broad bands of pastel colour. Test page and supply status print fine.  the text in this photo should be crisp white. Any ideas what's wrong or what else I can do?

S

[Repairatrooper]

You need to perform a factory reset and then perform at least 3 full calibrations in a row. This issue can be also caused by poor cartridges or dirty alignment sensors. 

[SueM141]

Hi, and thanks for the speedy reply. I printed out an alignment test page and everything seems fine there.

I've done the reset and calibrations as suggested with no improvement. I have been unable to find any info on the internet regarding the alignment sensors. Would this be a service engineer job?

Sue

[Repairatrooper]

To help me out helping you, print the supplies status page and post that. This gives a clear indication of how close the calibration is. I admit I am puzzled when you state that the alignment page looks fine. The sensors themselves are located on the front of the transfer belt when you open the front door. Spilled toner or paper dust can cause reading issues.

[SueM141]

Hope the quality is good enough. The alignment test page seemed to be looking more at whether the paper was in the right place.  The cartridges I am using are getting low, but I've never had this issue when they're low before - it just starts giving me warning messages. 

[SueM141]

Hm, that picture's not showing up for me. I'll try again.

[Bakedo]

Hi , Did you try with old cartridge wich is you changed? Some cartridges do this after replacement.

[SueM141]

the cartridges were last changed many months ago and the old ones have long since gone back to be recycled.

S

[Repairatrooper]

The supplies page appears correct, I asked for that because the colors are printed from each color cartridge and the black is pure black. If you have a printer based calibration issue the color strips will overlap the black frame and looking at the picture that does not appear to be the case. That would suggest you have either a driver issue or a corrupt file you are trying to print. Try printing from a different app with a different file and if you still have the issue, reinstall your printer drivers.

[SueM141]

Unfortunately, we had done both of those things before I posted the question! Including trying from a completely different machine with an updated version of Windows. Thinking about it, my husband has also lost that ability to print from his PC in the next room. So it may well be software/old machine issue.

Have a happy new year, repairatrooper!

Sue