Whatever I tried, Alignment failed.

[olly78]

My Deskjet F380 All-in-One is 11 years old. Never experienced my present problem. (Let me give u background info)

When the color cartridge was empty I never replaced it as I didn't need color prints. Since then I replaced the black ink cartridges many times with non HP cartridges. My present black ink cartridge has plenty of ink in it as it prints a great test page. In the past, printing became poor when the ink level went down.  Now I get an ALIGN CARTRIDGES message & it also shows estimated low  levels of color & black ink. Tried align procedure indicated several times without success.

Before this nothing had been changed although I did experience a couple of times that I could not print as the only option was to save the info to PDF file. (I think it was to PDF file. I'm 78 & not very computer knowledgeable)  Hope you can help me!!

Thanks for your effort.

Olly78

[Valsimot · Accepted solution]

When any of the ink cartridges are replaced to maintain good print quality printer goes through aligning cartridges process.

This is a 2 step process.

The 1st step is a printer to print an alignment page, that has printed lines and markers in black and in colour.

The 2nd step is to place the printed alignment page on the scanner and pressing button to scan the alignment page. Then the printer will scan lines and markers from alignment page and according to them will align new ink cartridges.

The problem starts if you are missing any of the colour or have a low print quality of black or colour ink on an alignment page then when the alignment page is scanned the printer reads that something is wrong and alignment fails. Next time you turn your printer ON the automatic alignment start again until the printer is properly aligned.

If your black print is good then you will need to replace colour ink cartridge to align your printer.

[olly78]

I have ordered a color cartridge but have not received it. As soon as I get it, I will try it. For at least one year nothing had changed yet the alignment of cartridges became an issue. (????)

Hopefully a new cartridge will solve my problem. Thanks for your suggestion.

Olly78

[olly78]

Thank you for your info.  Installed a new color cartridge & had some trouble with the cartridge alignment.  The printer kept printing repeatedly the test sheet (at least 4-5 times).  Eventually, printing worked to my satisfaction.  Thanks again.

Olly78