Region reset for HP8012

[kevin-canadian]

I have an HP 8012 printer which I bought in Europe. There, it uses 902 ink cartridges.

I have moved to Canada, where the equivalent cartridges are 910 ink cartridges.

I need to reset the printer region so that it will allow me to use my newly purchased 910 ink cartridges.

I spoke to HP technical support on the phone and I was told that a factory reset would reset the printer region. It did not.

How do I set the printer region?

[A_Gayathri]

Hi @kevin-canadian,

Welcome to the HP Support Community

I'd like to help!

I understand you moved and the printer is not accepting the new region cartridges.

We need to perform a regional reset on the printer to resolve this issue. 

The reset instructions are specific to your printer and performing those steps on a different printer may brick the device. 

I've sent you a private message with reset instructions, follow the reset instructions to perform a full reset and re-initialize the printer. 

To access your private messages, click the private message icon on the upper right corner of your HP Support Community profile, next to your profile Name or simply click on this link.

I hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

[kevin-canadian]

I called HP three times.

Each time I was told that because the printer is out of warranty I would have to pay for out of warranty service. Each time I pointed out that my printer is working fine. I never wanted warranty service, I just want instructions that would allow my fully working HP printer (about 3 years old) to work with legitimately purchased HP ink (for over 120$) in my new country of residence.

During the first all I was told to do a normal factory reset and it would "reset the region". Didn't work.

During the second call I was told I would need to use a "secret" support menu, which I could find thanks to a provided YouTube link, to do a "secure reset". The menu only presented me with a few reset options, none of which were called secure reset, and none of which worked. This prompted me to find an even more "secret" engineering menu (Googled my way to it), which provided an extra OOBE reset (out-of-box experience reset). Still didn't reset the printer region.

During the third call I was finally given the "real" solution, which involved using yet another "secret" menu, this time in the HP Smart Windows application (needed to use a VM for this since I run Linux, but I got it working). From this menu I provided some IDs and numbers to the technician, who gave me some codes back. I punched in the codes, the response codes computed in HP Smart were correct, and when I submitted the request a message said that the printer had accepted the region reset... But it hadn't. After a few hours on the phone and many attempts including resets and power offs and such, the technician eventually told me there was nothing more that they could do, and I would probably have to purchase a new printer.

Today I bought a Brother multi-function colour laser printer. So long HP.