HP is a company that makes printers (and all kinds of gear) that sets a standard. It’s a high standard, and you don’t tend to get through an experience with an HP printer without being impressed at some level. But one thing that catches a few people off guard is the often-frustrating experience of having to deal with a ‘cartridge error’.
These error messages tend to come up and cause trouble when you’ve been ‘caught out’ by your HP printer trying to use a refilled or third-party cartridge. If you’ve had an error message come up on your HP printer, and you’ve already tried turning it off and on again, trust us when we say that it isn’t time to panic just yet. There are still a few things you can do!
Check Your HP Cartridge Protection
First things first, you want to check that it’s actually a good idea to go overriding the error message you received on your HP printer. Some cartridge errors are actually happening for a good reason! HP prefers that everyone using their products use brand new, brand name printer cartridges. Built into their printers is an HP cartridge protection setting that you might find yourself having to override.
If you’ve had a go at refilling your cartridges yourself, there is a chance that some ink has caused a problem for one of the sensors in your printer’s housing. The print head could be clogged. Or it could just be that the cartridge isn’t fitted right. Get in there and check that everything is where it should be, and you might save yourself a serious headache down the track.
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How To Override/ Disable HP cartridge protection?
Now, if it is a compatible third-party cartridge that you’re trying to get working, you can absolutely make that happen. You can access your printer settings via the menu on some HP printers, and toggle off the cartridge protection from there. But if you’re handling this remotely via your computer your HP printer will likely prompt you with a message that says that it has detected that the cartridge you’re trying to use is counterfeit.
If you’ve bought third-party intentionally, you know that isn’t the case. Your HP printer will ask you if the cartridge you’ve installed was sold to you as a purportedly HP brand cartridge. It’s important that you don’t click yes here because then the printer will refuse the cartridge to protect itself.
If you acknowledge that the cartridge is third-party and that you knew that when you installed it, your HP printer should let you go ahead with it. HP cannot program their printers to refuse to make use of third-party cartridges, but they can in cases where it looks like the user didn’t know that they’ve been sold a counterfeit HP cartridge.
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Resetting your HP printer
You might have been through this process and made the easy misstep of clicking yes when asked if you mistakenly thought your cartridge was genuine. You can still fix the problem by resetting your printer. And rest assured, resetting an HP printer works much the same way as any other brand.
A factory reset on most HP printers involves turning the printer off and disconnecting the power cable. Once you’ve given it about 30 seconds, you can then reconnect your printer to the power and turn it on while holding the resume button. After ten seconds or so of holding the resume button, the attention light should come on, telling you that the printer is restoring factory settings.
From there, you’ll be able to restart the process of overriding the HP cartridge protection on your HP printer and use your refilled cartridge or third-party printer.
