Advice on bypassing low ink warning

Well I am off on the learning curve! I have been using Zorin (Ubuntu) for a day or so now. Things are progressing pretty well for an absolute newbie. Out of the box Ubuntu 12.04 (Zorin 6.4 LTS) is running the hardware on my laptop amazingly well. Its faster and smoother than Win 7 64. I am still building and learning so I KNOW I have a bunch to learn.

I just ran into my first snag of significance. My printer has two ink cartridges. Color and Black. For years I have been running Black Only and have no need for color at home. On windows I simply instruct the OS to ignore the low ink warning and my printer (Lexmark) works great in Black Only. Its a basic 100 dollar all in one. If I have to replace it I may consider that, but I prefer to simply use it on occasion in Black Only if possible. This is a work leftover and all I really need is a black printer and not the fax, copy, etc.....

Can someone help me with ideas as to how (if possible) to configure my Unbuntu OS to ignore the printer low ink warning? I am pretty sure the driver "sees" the printer correctly because it found Lexmark and I can see the low ink warning flag in the printer configuration box of Zorin. If I bring up the printer it clearly show the printer is reporting "low ink". What can I do about it other than buying color ink or trashing the printer? Options?

 

See if your ink cartridge has a sensor that you can cover. This trick works well for Brother printer:

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/39806

If you have no such luck with your printer, I would consider finding a compatible 3rd-party cartridge instead.

The more long-term solution would be buying a monochrome laser printer, particularly since you only need black.

 

You appear to be saying that Ubuntu has no way to simply bypass/ignore the low ink warning? The printer works great and prints pages quickly and neatly in windows.

I am very surprised after reading around on the net. There are so many folks running into low ink problems using linux, and many have more than half full ink cartridges. These are defective hardware warning flags. With the amount of printing issues that I read about, it surprises me that nobody has coded a distro with the option to ignore/bypass these ink flags. Windows easily over-rides these and the printers work fine. Hmmmmm?

 

in hp there printer driver utility in Lexmark i dont know but if you find driver utility you can do lot more settings than default.


try it on live cd or usb see if it work your driver utility i just put example and if its working then install on your pc

http://support.lexmark.com/index?docLocale=en_US&page=content&id=DR860&locale=RU&userlocale=RU

 

Thanks guys. I cannot find a hole to cover and my reading online comes up empty for tricking a Lexmark as you can with a Brother.

I did download the zip file that was linked above. I don't see my printer listed but I am still going to try to use this file later today. I am on Ubuntu 12.04 which was not around back in 2009 when this file was released. I have nothing to lose but a few minutes of my time. I'll let you know how this goes.

 

The printer driver I downloaded (from the link above) isn't working at this point. I am still second guessing myself as to whether or not I did it correctly. I put the driver on the desktop for simplicity. When I open a terminal and enter the command line noted in the post above it doesn't do anything. The prompt drops to the next line and seems to freeze (doesn't blink). I waited awhile and nothing.

If I double click on the downloaded file a box comes up showing the file name followed by /gedit and its light gray. The box just sits there.

At this point since I am so new I can't tell if its the fact that ubuntu 12.04 doesn't work with this driver, or if the driver isn't any good with this printer - OR - just as likely its operator error. When I bring up the terminal do I need to change directory to the desktop because I didn't do that. I just keyed in the command.

I can say that whatever driver is already in the Zorin 6.4 release finds and identifies the correct printer along with showing the low ink warning. Is there any way to pull that driver out and find out if its available by itself as a download. Just grasping at straws.

 

Gedit is a text editor; I don't know why its being selected for a zip file. In Nautilus (file manager) you should be able to right-click on the zip and select the extract option.

Yes you have to change to the directory where the archive is located.

 

i put link above as example i dont know what model you have you have to search site for exact deb file according to your model

last thing dont try to make your pc complete in day relax do it in shifts and if things dont work leave it ..........relax and than start tomorrow...........this trick always work with linux

Linux is like super hot girl more pushy you become more weird results you get from her.........