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hp 550c printer only prints bottom half of text

This is an old computer that someone got from someone for free and wanted to use to print out documents. It has a new black ink cartridge and print out test pages fine, the color cartridge is empty since they won't be printing color but you have to have a color cartridge in to print. Just wondering if anyone knows how to fix this or if it can be fixed, i know it's an old printer and i don't know why it would do that if it prints out a test page fine.. i've tried to print stuff out of ie and out of notepad and wordpad and all of it comes up w/ the bottom half of the letters only.. missing the top half of each letter, it's weird.

thanks for any help

danny

DRRYAN3

If it prints the self test OK, you can probably rule out the cartridge or the electrical connections to the cartridge. I would suspect your problem is in the cable between the PC and the printer, or in the settings on the parallel port. Try setting the PC's parallel port to ECP or bidirectional first. Failing that, try a different parallel cable, preferably a newer one.

Member_2_49692

1. Make sure you are using an IEEE1284 printer cable under 10ft in length.

2. Uninstall the printer driver. Then look to see if you have any anti virus or utility programs. Go into each of these programs and disable them so they do not load at startup then reboot & reload driver.

3. What version of windows are you running ? IS the printer an inkjet, dot matrix etc... ? ??

4. try printing in wordpad by going to start,accessories,wordpad then typing in a sentence and going to file then print check the name of the printer it is showing.

Member_2_49692

also what speed processor and RAM do you have ?

Member_2_49692

ipimppeoplelikeyou

do you still need assitance ?

DRRYAN3

Looks like we've been pimped.

modder

Any idea who should get the points?

modder
Community Support

DRRYAN3

Modder,

No problem here with a split.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Member_2_49692