Deskjet 540 Problem

[davewalthall]

I have an HP Deskjet 540, and am having trouble printing. Sometimes, it works perfectly, other times, it is completely terrible. When it dies, the power and status light alternately blink. Turning it off and then back on causes it to spit out hundreds of pages with only part of a line on it, all gibberish (not even letters or number, ascii characters). Then, once I clear that print job, I can send the exact same thing to the printer, and sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it dies. Also, when it dies on a document two times, it usually dies in a different place. Turning everything off in the system tray and disabling the Task Scheduler seems to help some, but maybe that is wishful thinking. It is unfortunately not reproducible, so I never know if what I am doing is helping or if it just got lucky that time.

I have the Zip100 external software installed, but I don't have the actual zip drive plugged into my computer since it fought with my printer (passthrough wouldn't work).

Also, my Zipdrive, when I do plug it in, acts very strangely. It assumes that the total free space that I have on how ever many disks I put in is 100Mb. ie if I put in a disk and use 35Mb of it, and then put in a new disk, it assumes that the free space on the new disk is 100-35 = 65Mb.

Any ideas?

[CluelessSi]

Hmmm very wierd... well for th printer thing it might be that the cable connection is either not secure or the heads got dirty also on the hp manual there should be trouble shooting that explain the flashing lights.
as for the drive .... i am not sure could be faulty drive or your computer ports not configured correctly so data is messed up.. hope that helps.. best to call tech support.

[BADFlSH]

Try going to http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpd01304.html#P66_7096 and checking out situation number 4. You might also find something usefull at http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpd04682.html

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