EPSON R2400 "Media out" error

[Marco B]

Hi all,

My R2400 recently started to give persistent "Media out or not loaded correctly" errors. I can see the print files being spooled to the (Windows) spool directory correctly, and the Epson status monitor showing progress pops up and starts displaying progress up to 10% or so, but than it stops and gives the "media out" error, while there still are sheets in the paper feed.

Adding extra paper doesn't help.

Looking around at the internet, this seems to be a dreaded and very common issue with Epson printers. Has anyone of you had similar issues with your 2400/2880 or 3800 printer?

One solution suggested by Epson seems to be to reinstall the driver, I have done that, and somewhat surprisingly it helped at first, but now after a month, I am back to square one, and reinstalling the driver didn't help this time.

I am also wondering whether it is a soft- or hardware issue. :confused: Since reinstalling the driver helped at first, it suggests the printer being mechanically OK, but on the other hand, I have seen suggestions of people who connected their Epson printer to another computer, installed the driver, and still had the same issue, suggesting mechanical failure...

Since this printer is way past his warranty, I also made an attempt to open it up. I managed to remove some of the cover plates on the outside, which already was a though job, but the printer feed unit is almost inaccessible.

I always wonder if manufacturers really hate their own repair-units this much :confused: ...

I am also wondering what type of detection device there actually is in this printer, some mechanical switch responding to the weight of paper in the tray, or some optical device? I can't see anything suggesting such a thing when looking in the top paper feed.

Anyone have suggestions or dealt with the same issue? (well, I guesse it's going to be: send it to Epson, or buy a new one, but I can try at least)

Marco

 

[amphoto]

You could maybe try using a 3rd part printer driver, such as QTRip, Gimp Print, Imageprint (the demo version on a Mac prints a watermarked image) etc. to narrow down whether or not it is a driver issue.

 

[Marco B]

Not such a bad idea, I will have a look at that.

Interestingly, I now noticed that if I print using "Plain paper" as media setting and "Economy" as the quality setting, it WILL feed the paper and print! Just with any other media settings, it fails...

So it seems unlikely at least that there is a mechanical failure...

I will try uninstalling the driver completely, and even check out the registry and clean up there if anything is left behind...

Any further suggestions welcome.

 

[Marco B]

One last addition: to be clear on this point: the printer doesn't even commence feeding the paper, so it is not an issue of the paper being loaded, but than rejected and ejected out of the printer. There is simply no loading action at all, none of the mechanical parts of the feed mechanism come into motion.

I DO hear the printer responding with a quick check and run of the print head though, but the feed mechanism doesn't respond.

I can also manually feed the paper using the paper feed button on the printer, but even in that case, with the paper partially fed into the printer, the printer still refuses to print, and in this specific case ejects it.

 

[Marco B]

OK, I installed QTR and gave it a try, and YES, it feeds the paper and starts printing~!

Only problem: i can't use QTR to do any of my normal printing work (e.g. print a Word document), so, although I now know for sure the printer is OK, and the driver or its stored settings are f******d up, I am still not much closer to a solution...

I have made more attempts to reinstall the driver, even downgrading to v5.5, but nothing helped up to now.

 

[Joe Lipka]

You need to be very careful with all the settings on the printer dialog box. I said many bad words before I figured out that the paper type and paper source settings had to be matched. I still have trouble getting the R2400 to get started properly sometimes.

The whole issue with drivers is also kind of odd. I think there are different drivers for the USA and Europe, so it does make a difference where you get your downloaded Epson driver.

But, you have it working and that is what is good.

 

[donbga]

You need to be very careful with all the settings on the printer dialog box. I said many bad words before I figured out that the paper type and paper source settings had to be matched. I still have trouble getting the R2400 to get started properly sometimes.

The whole issue with drivers is also kind of odd. I think there are different drivers for the USA and Europe, so it does make a difference where you get your downloaded Epson driver.

But, you have it working and that is what is good.

Ditto what Joe said. It's also possible that your printer drivers have been damaged somehow.

Don Bryant

 

[Marco B]

I have it back up and running now. I reinstalled the driver another time in a slightly different matter.

In addition, I still had one Word document that refused to print. I now discovered however, that it had "Manual-Roll" as feed setting in the Word document "Page Setup settings" itself, while I had set the "Sheet" feed option in the driver. It seems, even though specifically setting the paper feed option in the driver to "Sheet", the document setting still overrules it, and causes a "media-out" error.

I don't know how it ended up at "Manual-Roll", but it is now working again. I think it would be better if the driver setting overruled any document settings at all times in this respect, because usually, you make last time adjustments in the driver just before printing, and expect these to be honoured, which clearly isn't the case for the feed option.

But it is consistent with what you both are saying as well.