Troubleshooting for Brother Printers March 03, 2011 16:09 by Huw Carrington
Brother Printer Error's make up quite a few of our customer enquiries, so today we've been researching some Brother printers, and the faults that customers can come across.
Jump to your Brother Printer Error
- Brother cartridge not recognised
- S05 Error
- E50 Error
- E51 Error
- Printing Black Pages
- Check Paper Path Error
Brother printer cartridge not recognised
One of the error messages that I see when helping customers here at Stinkyink is that a printer doesn't recognise a cartridge.
This is all the more interesting with Brother printers as the cartridges have no electrical contact to misread, and detects the ink by use of light and lasers, which I'm sure we'll all agree is pretty cool.
If you do see it though, you're looking at either a defective item, or you've not put the cartridge in properly, so Brother put together a list of things to do to find out if it is a faulty cartridge or not - just follow their steps below.
1 - Lift the cover of the printer.
2 - Remove all ink cartridges - just pull the white plastic hook towards you.
3 - The printer should prompt you to install each cartridge at this point.
4 - Believe it or not, we follow the printer's demands now, and install each cartridge. It's important to do this in the order that it tells you though, no matter how much you want to rebel against a machine's commands. Press firmly on each ink until its fully seated, and push the white hook towards the cartridge to make sure all is well.
5 - It'll now ask you if you've changed the cartridge, so press 1 (yes) for each one, and then it'll start a cleaning cycle.
If it's still complaining that there's 'NO CARTRIDGE' then there's something wrong with the cartridge you've got in there. But don't worry, if you've had them from us we fully guarantee them so simply give us a call and we'll take care of things for you.
'S05'
- This can appear when the ahem 'transfer of data via the parallel port' is interupted. Resetting your printer will usually get things moving again. back to top
'E50'
- You should only see this if you have a laser printer, as it means the fuser unit is damaged. Unfortunately this means you need to change the unit, which can be a costly process, especially with Brother Originals. back to top
'E51'
- Simply put, this means you've probably just changed a cartridge and done something wrong. It'll come up if the laser, the lid, or another part of the printer isn't in its proper position, so open it up and make sure everything is where it should be before trying again. back to top
'Black Pages'
- This can be both an actual error message, or your printer might print black pages, which I'm sure we'll all agree is bad. The problem lies with the internal workings of the machine, and I've yet to find a way to fix it yourself short of taking it to a service centre. back to top
'Check Paper Path'
- Sometimes you'll see this if one of the printer's rollers is dirty (or out of alignment, but that's pretty rare), so it won't pick up the paper properly. Simply give it a clean, and try that print job one more time. back to top
So, if you're panicking about your Brother Printer playing up, hopefully this will help.
Want to know more? Check out ourGeneral Printer Maintenance article from last year!
1 Response to “Troubleshooting for Brother Printers”
March 09, 2011 16:16
Hi - great to see some really useful help for Brother printer users. I've just been doing a comparison of the top selling printers and the Brother DCP-J315W is up there, despite its dinky size!
Thanks for being a great ink supplier - we've ordered a couple of times now and have stuck your sticker on our printer!
Best regards,
Techmanjay