Error ID10T: PEBKAC

Another errand Bunny and I did yesterday [1] was to pick up a new black ink cartridge for the printer (which cost about half the price of the printer, but that's another rant for another time). We got home, and I replaced the cartridge. Later that night, Bunny attempted to print out The New York Times Crossword Puzzle [2], as she does every night.

Only it did not print properly. No black was being printed. We futzed with it for some time, and Bunny was able to get enough of the crossword puzzle to work with it, but overall, the black was problematic. I was fearful that we to buy a new printer.

After a night's rest, I had a thought—Bunny mentioned a problem with the printer yesterday, and when I checked, it stated it was out of black ink. I opened the printer up, and removed the black catridge, but the existing cartridges we had were for the previous printer. So that's when we went out running several errands and eating dinner [3]. There were several hours when the printer was open, sans an ink cartridge, so maybe whatever ink was left in the print head had dried up, blocking the ink from flowing. Maybe some denatured alcohol could clean that up.

I removed the new cartridge, cleaned the area where the ink goes into the print head, and when I was putting the cartridge back in, I noticed a small tag on the cartridge sticking out.

Don't tell me, I thought. Did I forget to remove the “remove me before installing” tag?

Yup.

D'oh!

The printer works fine now.

Sigh.