Problems with Brother MFC-7420

Hello there,

This is my first post so please bear with me.

I have an iMac 24in 2.8GHz running OS X v10.5.8. Connected to it via a USB cable is a Brother MFC-7420 printer which has been working successfully for about 14 months. Recently, it started to print blank pages only, an infinite number of blank pages regardless of the file originally presented to it. I have tried to print from different applications, e.g. Preview, Safari, MS Word and Excel. I have deleted all the Brother printer drivers and reloaded them from the Brother website. However, the problem remains.

Any ideas? Have you seen this problem before?

Thanks.

It's most likely a printer failure... it's all too common for printers just to stop working. Try cleaning the contacts where the printer cartridges come in contact on the printer with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol.

Have you tried another printer on the computer to see if it does the same thing?

Thanks for the reply, Macman.

I don't have another printer but I do have another computer (an old PC, yuck). So I downloaded the necessary drivers, connected the printer to the PC and - lo and behold - the same problem remains. So it appears to be a hardware problem with the printer rather than with software.

I will try cleaning the connectors as you suggest, although I'm not really au fait with the innards of these things.

He's advising you to clean the printer cartridge head(s) not any connectors since they would not be visible anyway. However, it sounds like the printer cartridge head itself may be defective. I've had that happen on an HP printer. And when that happens, it's probably best to just buy another printer rather than try to replace the cartridge head. Try the cleaning first.