Printer Shooting Blanks!!!

[Martian]

I have an Epson Stylus 440 Color Printer and it's black and colored inks were running out, so I got new ones (generic brands by a company called Venus) and now the printer has stopped printing on pages. It just prints out blank pages and the pages are loaded and printed out faster then usual.

I used this same Generic brand of inks for almost a year and it worked fine, until I decided to replace them with the same brand and now it doesn't print anything!!! I dunno what to do, I did all the cleaning and printing tests that are suggested by the manual and still no luck. Can anyone help me out??

Thanks.

p.s. I have Office XP and run Windows 2000 Professional

[Killer_Typo]

did you makesure to peel off the plastic covering the spots where the ink comes out?

[Martian]

did you makesure to peel off the plastic covering the spots where the ink comes out?

I peeled off the yellow sticker on the top. But as for the bottom area where the ink comes out from I never peeled off before on any of my previous ink cartridges. They used to work fine. Wont peeling it off make a mess?

Just curious before I do something I never did before. Thanks.

[DuncanIdaho]

If there's a thin film of plastic covering the bottom with a tab to let you peel it off, by all means peel it off. If there's something that looks like metal, or hard plastic, I wouldn't try peeling that off. I've not seen a recent Epson cartridge, so I couldn't tell you if they, like most others, have that thin plastic film over the ink holes at the bottom of your cartridges. (My old Cannon printer did not have film, just a plastic cap on the bottom).

I'll point out one thing, though, since I haven't seen it mentioned: Ink jet printers often have 2 parts to replace. Ink cartridges, AND, print heads. HP printers, (which I prefer them for the following reason), have the print heads built into the cartridge, meaning you never have to replace the print heads, since each cartridge you replace includes the print heads. (Of course, this makes them more expensive). Most other brands I've seen you should buy new print heads ever after every 2 or 3 ink changes. (Most never bother, and just replace the printer since they are becoming very inexpensive). Last set of print heads I bought were for a Cannon printer, and set me back 50$, but as a bonus they came with fresh ink cartridges, too.

If after replacing ink cartridges your printer doesn't print, or if your printer has sat for some time without being used, then suddenly won't print, often replacing the print heads will fix it. Hope this is useful info, you might want to dig into your Espson's manual and see if it has any info about print heads.