Canon i9900 printer problem and solution
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
In the very last paragraph of my post on Buying a photo printer I noted that my friend Dale had been having problems with his Canon i9900, the same printer I have.
I’ve printed hundreds of images on my printer and only a few have shown problems but they were so minor I let them pass. However, in printing this tendril image the problem looked considerably worse. It looked like either a smudge from too much ink or possibly some extra ink stuck to one of the feed rollers.
I just got off the phone with Dale and he gave me a handy tip to try to solve the problem:
1. Take the paper out of the printer.
2. Turn the printer on.
3. With the printer on, hold down the form feed button (the other button, there are only two: power and the form feed) and watch the status light.
4. When the status light has blinked three times, let go. The printer will make some noise and attempt to feed paper and it will keep doing this cycle 4-5 times. When it’s done you can put paper back in and print.
I did this maintenance routine one time and reprinted the tendrils that were smudging and they turned out perfectly. I printed 4 copies and each one was perfect.
I don’t think there’s any downside to doing this cleaning routine, it uses no ink like a head cleaning does so I plan to do it after any long printing session just to keep the rollers clean.
Thanks Dale.
Thanks a lot for the information about this particular i9900 problem. I have the i9900 too, and it’s a great printer. Now I know what to do if I encounter the same issue.
Gary, don’t wait for the issue to arise, just do it as a matter of regular maintenance. I just did it again after printing 20 notecards. Why not? Can’t hurt and can only help.
OK, Richard, that’s good advice. It’ll become routine maintenance. Thanks!
Richard,
You Rock!!! I have been screwing around with my printer, searching the web…it was making a grinding sound when I tried to print. I said what the hell, I’ll try anything at this point; even though I knew it wouldn’t help. IT WORKED!!!!! Printer is now fine.
Thanks again.
CB
Chris, great, glad to help. Update on it.
It does use a bit of ink. Not a lot but a bit.
Try repeating it a few times. Do the routine maybe two or three times.
On the last time, put a plain piece of paper in (not good photo paper, cheap photocopy paper) and do the three blink routine. It will convulse a bit and feed the paper though but the paper will soak up extra ink on the rollers, drying them out a bit.
Lastly, and this has nothing to do with maintenance, I was having other problems with smudging and discovered that humidity had curled my paper just enough so that the back edge of it was rubbing against the head and picking up some black ink as the paper ejected from the printer. To solve that problem I started keeping my paper in sealed plastic bins and lo and behold, no more problem, even on humid days. An air conditioner would also help, of course but keeping the paper dry is a must.
Glad you’re back in business Chris.
I have just got a i9900. It kicks out a blank piece of paper when I turn it on. Is this normal, is there any fix to this.
Thanks. John
John: no, it’s nor normal as far as I can tell. Are you only turning it on and not accidentally hitting the other button? That other button does a lot of things including “form feed” which means squirt the current piece of paper through and out.
How are you loading paper? How much paper are you loading at one time? What kind of paper?
Richard,
Found a great tech interview on Canon’s website detailing latest developments/improvements in their new generation of printers. Fascinating stuff. As a bonus, in reading it, I finally figured out what was behind a quirky problem I’ve been having with my i9900. I wrote to you a year or so ago asking if you had any guess as to what would cause some prints to print with the final 1/2 inch or so of the print showing faint, fine horizontal noise lines. Happens most often on 4×6 prints, on the final end coming out of the printer, and it wasn’t until recently that I figured out that if I printed the 4×6 image on a 5×7 piece of paper, the lines wouldn’t show up. This article provided a critical piece of info that helped me figure out what was causing this: print speed in the end of paper tends to be slower than in the middle of the page. This is apparently common knowledge to printer people…it wasn’t to me tho! And so in some instances, printer accuracy/print quality suffers at the very end of the paper feed. This issue was a major hurdle Canon had to overcome in it’s efforts to speed up this new generation of printers they’re turning out. It took forever for them to figure out how to make the process print faster and still feed accurately simultaneously and it involves some innovations that they refer to as a double-encoder system. This double encoder is a new mechanism that incorporates an additional encoder dedicated for paper ejection, added to the existing encoder (sensor) which works for paper feeding in the main print area of the page. So there…another mystery not necessary solved, but finally understood.
You can find the article at:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=StandardDisplayAct&fcategoryid=103&keycode=developers
Particularly the section titled “Photo Lab Quality”
Warmest regards,
darlene aguillard
real.life@cox.net
baton rouge, LA
Darlene: I certainly do remember you and appreciate your return to share the link and information. Thank you.
Since we last spoke I bought a Pixma Pro9000, the replacement for the i9900 which I would think would qualify as their latest generation of printers. Initially I was a bit put of by it becuase it’s color gamut was a bit different from the i9900 and I was so used to the 9900 colors that any change made me uneasy. But, it’s a much better built printer and it exhibits no banding and gradient stepping like the i9900 did; it’s much higher resolution.
It uses their relatively new and slightly more expensive Chromalife 100 dye basd ink system which is supposed to be more archival than the i9900 inks.
I’d say the printers are similar enough so that if you were going to stick with dye based inks it’s the one to get.
My friend Dale, who also has the i9900 decided to go with a pigment ink printer and since Canon has not released the pixma Pro 9500, the pigment cousin to the pixma pro 9000, he bought a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5000 which is a much higher end printer. He loves the output on it and the inks it uses are considerably more archival than the dye based inks we’re using.
Since most of what I’m printing these days is notecards and postcards I’m fine with the dye based inks and now that I have a printer that will make slightly more archival prints I’m also fine with printing big stuff too.
If you want some samples of output from both your printer and the 9000 let me know, I’ll be happy to send you some cards and prints so you can see what the differences are.
I am trying to print B&W, (grey Scale) images using a G5 iMac as the source. I have set the photo mode as grey scale, so there is no color in the digital image. I consistently get Green shades, or sometimes BLUE shades but not Black and White.
Apple claims that OS-X Tiger automatically identifies the printer and sends information to it to duplicate what is visible on the screen. I have printed 20 large format prints and can’t get rid of the green tint.
What am I doing wrong.?
What should I do?
here is what I have found to get rid of the green tint,
Printing black and white: plain paper,print quality high,turn on diffusion,print in gray scale. This is on a pc using windows xp and a i9900 printer,, DAve
Dave and booth: the issue is less with software, more with paper. The type of paper you use and how you have the computer set up (profiles or colorsync) to address that paper will determine cast or color accuracy. Try another paper with the printer.
I’ve had no problems getting great black and white, monochrome and other prints from the i9900 but I do have problems with some papers. The solution is either to install a profile for that paper type and print from software that uses it, or, change papers.
I have had my i9900 for about a year. The quality has been great. But…now I am seeing banding throughout my large prints. You have to look twice to see it but it is there. I deep clean the heads before printing but it does not make a difference. Does anyone have a suggestion…Thanks…Larry
Larry: My question for you is, are you seeing banding on images you’ve printed before with no banding or, are you seeing banding on new images only? If new images only, has anything changed in your workflow?
A few of us who have or had this printer have seen banding, not on all images but on some. Most of mine has been in the area of blur where the blur changes color. The color gradient is a bit too abrupt in places and mine shows on even small, 5×7″ prints and notecards.
I actually sold mine and bought a Pro 9000, the printer that replaced it. The new printer isn’t perfect but the banding, for the most part is gone. The new printer has more resolution and so will handle subtle gradients better. It also uses a different ink set which canon calls Chromalife 100 and the ink, on most papers, if more lightfast/archival. The printer did take a while to get used to in that the inks print differently than the i9900 inks but now that I’ve made the transition I’m happy.
The i9900 is a spectacular printer and if only certain images are showing the banding, maybe do a bit more work on the images on your computer to experiment with different color and resolution settings.
Do let us know what you learn in the process.
All my images are showing subtile banding. I am going to test my images on another i9900 to see If is the image or the printer.
Larry: Wow, interesting that all of them are showing it. if you can test on another i9900 great, and, if you can also test on another type of printer, canon or other, that would be great too.
Thanks for the report and do keep us informed on the results.
I printed the file at 300dpi on another i9900 and came out with the same results. Then I printed the file out larger at 200dpi on a Lightjet 500 and it came out perfect. I have run a lot of prints on the i9900. When I do a head alignment the black and cyan rectangles never come out solid. They still have a ghosted line pattern in them. I might have just over used it. I would run off 30-40 prints at a time at full coverage. Maybe its time to go to the pro9000.
Larry: I printed thousands (many 1000’s) of prints on my i9900. They were generally 7″x5″ notecards with an image only on one part but I printed a lot of them and certainly hundrds of 11×14s. I had problems but research showed me it had more to do with paper curl from humidity than the printer. But, I always saw banding on certain images and I suppose if I worked at it I could change the resolution of those image to lessen it.
I sold the printer and got the pro 9000 less because of these issues and more because the Chromalife 100 inks it uses are more lightfast than the older inks on the i9900. For notecards, who cares, right? Right. But, it also has more resolution and so, my banding issue is almost gone completely. I have a few images that band now still but I can live with that.
If you lived close enough I’d say come on over and try printing on mine. Can you test a 9000 near you? That would probably tell you a lot.
Good luck with this and let me know what you decide to do or if you find a fix for the problem.
I have a Canon i9900 and all my prints are coming out with black streaking at the bottom. I have conducted head cleanings and I have even done that trick with the feeder button; however, the printer is still leaving smuding on all of my prints. What can I do to fix this?
Mike: I’m guessing it’s less the printer, more the paper. The paper may be either curled from moisture or from something else.
Try cleaning the rollers by holding down the power button until the light blinks three times, then let it go and the machine will convulse for a while doing it’s cleaning. If you can get it to do this, when it’s done, do it once more, just to be sure.
Now, find some dry, clean, brand new paper right out of the shrink wrap and run a print. I’m betting it works fine.
The problem may be how you’re storing your paper. I had this problem and now I store all of my paper in a closed drawer and the problem is gone.
Let me know if this helps.
I have noticed that it does it less with glossy paper and is horrendously horrible with matte…I’m not too sure why this is, but I’ll try the storage idea. Thanks for your help
Mike: makes sense, matte paper absorbes more moisture. I print almost exclusively on matte and I had this problem for a year before I started taking better care of how I stored my paper. I’m guessing this will solve it for you. Do let us know.
Richard: I started storing my paper in an air tight container…and I pulled my printer out of my basement to a dryer environment. The problem i was seeing is going away…as of yesturday I still had one band of black ink still showing up on my prints, but I’ve been printing some today and everything looks great. Thanks for your help!
Mike: this is great news and as you use up all the paper that was left out and get to new stuff, try to keep it sealed in shrink wrap if it comes that way, until just before you use it.
Humidity is a big deal with paper and printers and both too wet and too dry can make for problems.
Thanks for reporting this and let us know if you notice anything else that we should be aware of to stop problems.
PS: I’m sorry if you tried to post yesterday, this site and my other sites were down for a day because of server problems. Hopefully fixed now.
Another question: As I am printing I find that in some of my prints the black ink dries fine, and then the next day portions of the print have a bronze tint to it where it should be solid black. Why is this happening and what can i do to stop it. Thanks again for your time!
Mike
Mike, I’m not totally sure. What type of paper are you using?
There is a print flaw called “bronzing” but this doesn’t sound like that.
I am using HP Premium Plus matte paper. It only discolors with the black, everything else looks great.
Mike: I’d try using a different kind of paper, one of Canon’s matte papers or something else. Paper makes a huge difference in these printers.
I buy quite a bit of paper from:
Red River Paper. Their Polar Matte does well in that printer as does their aurora (fine art).
If you are having trouble with black marks and streaking on your prints from the Canon i9900, try the following.
Go to “Start”, Settings, Printers. Click on the Canon i9900. On the screen that pops up hit “printer” and then “properties” and click on the “maintenance” tab.
Click on the “Custom Setting” button and then put a check mark in the box marked “Prevent Paper Abrasion.”
This eliminates all those stray marks you get when you use heavier paper or envelopes.
This can only be done from the main printer setting. There is no way to get to this from the printer settings on any individual print job.
Everytime you print a page you will get a pop-up indicating you have the “Prevent Paper Abrasion” feature on and you will have to indicate “okay” to go ahead with the printing. The only way you can turn it off is to go back in from the main printer setting once again.
This works wonderfully however. Prints perfect envelopes and heavier paper with no stray blotches.
Thanks Angela, this is really useful.
I have an i9900, which for the most part I love (picture quality). But, lately… it’s been kicking out the paper after printing anywhere from 1 - 3 inches of the picture. My computer does the beep beep (indicating new/removed hardware), and my printer’s popup menu indicates that the printer is off-line. Then it comes back on line and does the whole thing over again! I’ve destroyed alot of good paper in the process.
Any ideas what might be causing this problem? Oh, and every now and then I get a message that indicates that my machine could perform faster on a USB2 outlet (which is what it’s already plugged into - urgh). I’ve moved all of my other printers/scanner etc on USB around to try an eliminate this problem, but to no avail (it only happens with the i9900).
Thanks!
Lisa, I’ve had this problem and I think it’s all about USB. Which port you’re plugged into on the printer and how your computer is handling sending through its USB port.
By chance are you using either an old or a very long USB cable? I’d try switching the USB cable and see if that helps.
Oh, one more thing: are you using a USB hub by chance? If so, try plugging directly into the printer to see if that helps.
Let us know if any of this helps.
I have an i9900 that has developed a feed problem. While facing the printer, the roller on the right side will grab and pull the paper in cock-eyed. It seems that their is only a feed roller in the middle of the carriage. This printer is rarely used so I am a bit perplexed. I tried changing paper, but it all does the same thing.
Thanks,
-Vernon
Vernon: I’m going to bet that since you don’t use it often the problem has to do with your paper and either dryness or humidity but paper curl either way.
If you can, do this.
1. clean the rollers: turn on the printer and once it’s up and running, hold down the paper feed (not the power) button until the light blinks three times, then let go and it will convulse as it cleans rollers.
Once it stops, do it one more time.
Put a single piece of 8×11″ photocopy paper in sideways (the 11″ side up) and do the cleaning routine one more time, hold button down, 3 blinks, let go. This time it will pull the paper through.
Toss the paper.
2. Open a new package of photo printer paper. It must be new right out of the shrink wrap. If you don’t have any, go buy some.
Put a piece of this in and print a photo.
Does it work?
If all is now well then it was your older paper.
The thing I learned is to not open the shrink wrap on any of this paper until just before I use it, and never leave it out in the printer, even over night. I keep all of my paper in a right drawer and in its box and I even toss some desiccant in the drawer to keep it dry.
If this doesn’t work let us know, we’ll dig a bit deeper.
Good luck and happy printing.
I am having issues when printing black and white photos onto glossy paper. There is a faint blue band approx 1/2 inch from the top of a 7×5 (the right hand side of a 5×7). Have you encountered this issue?
thanks,
Al B.
Al: Sorry, I’m not sure of the orientation of the paper going through the printer which would help us figure out what’s causing the line. Is the line running perpendicular to the printer carriage? If so, I doubt it’s the head, it’s probably something the paper is dragging through in the feed mechanism, like a dirty roller. If the line is running parallel to the printer carriage I’m not quite sure what’s causing it but it’s not a dirty roller.
If it’s a dirty roller then try the technique I mentioned in comment #34 above: clean the rollers and see if that helps.
Either way, let us know which way the line is running.
Help, all of a sudden my Canon i9900 stopped printing reds! I just replaced one of the reds the others look to have plenty of ink. No error is occuring, it’s just printing out yucky… greens yellow and blue and black… any suggestions? I unsnapped and snapped in all the colors…. no deal. turned on and off… I don’t know what else to try. thanks, Becky
Becky, you probably need to clean the head as the red (there is only one red) is clogged. This is done in software. Try the light cleaning first, then if that doesn’t work do the heavier cleaning. On the Mac you can find the 9900 printer utility in the print application. Just run through it and see what happens. Good luck.
Hi, and thanks cleaning the head worked like a charm, didn’t occur to me. Was hard to find the file on the Mac, but once I did it was really fast to do.
Becky: Fantastic, great that you solved it.
Out of curiosity, what kind of paper do you use on your printer and what programs on your Mac do you print from?
I am having a problem with my i9900, the Yellow ink will not flow. I have done the head cleaning several times with no luck, installed new ink tank, still no go. The same problem happened several weeks ago and head cleaning solved the problem , but not this time. Any suggestions ?
Dave: There are two head cleanings, “regular” and “deep.” Are you doing the deeper one?
The next step is to remove the cartridges and inspect the head, maybe cleaning it with a q-tip and some alcohol. I doubt you’ll see the clog but you might.
The last step is to order a new head. They’re not expensive and this is a reason to choose these Canon printers as the heads are easily replaced. This is a last resort as I’m pretty sure the above cleanings will take care of it.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
Richard: Yes I have tried both ” regular” and “deep cleaning”. Thanks, I”ll try the Q tip and alcohol. Has any one had any success the head cleaning solutions sold on line ?
I hate to go the replacement route, but that may be the final answer. Thanks again.
Dave, I think the head cleaning solution is probably like eclipse lens cleaner or alcohol but maybe best to go that route, could be that alcohol leaves something behind when it evaporates, I don’t really know. The idea, though, is to unclog the nozzle and I’d think whatever you use should be like a weak solvent for the dried ink in there.
Let us know what you do and what works (or doesn’t) and thanks for posting.
I have a Canon i9900 and a MacBookPro. When I first got the printer I printed large black and whites and had no problems. I printed a couple 8×10 and some 4×6 color prints, they were all fine. Since then I have been printing many web pages and regular documents. When I recently tried to print photos I got inconsistent color. I printed the test file from digitaldog.com and the grays and whites came out peach. A few days later I tried again it was fine. Tried again later same problem, so I downloaded an updated driver from Canon’s website, now the grays are green. What’s up with the flip flopping and bad color? I am using Canon paper and ink and the problem is the same whether I use plain paper or photo.
Dee: this sounds like an application problem. What application are you printing from and how do you set the color controls and profile for the paper?
I can tell you as a Mac user I’ve had to work out various printing differences between iPhoto and Aperture as each of them uses the same driver and colorSync differently. Aperture, like PhotoShop and Lightroom allows you to choose a profile for the paper you’re using while iPhoto does not. So for certain kinds of printing jobs I print using the system color table with colorSync and for others I use Aperture and paper profiles.
I know I didn’t answer your question directly but maybe I gave you a bit more to chew on.
Color management is a pretty deep topic and I don’t know all that much about it, I just solve my own problems the best I can as they come up.
Let us know if any of this helps and do let us know more about your system and application setup.
Our Canon i9900 is making a squealing noise when printing (it appears to be that final push that triggers the noise). Any idea what it could be or how to fix it? As well, the black nozzle appears to be clogged but after cleaning and deep cleaning it repeatedly, there does not seem to be any improvement. Short of getting a new print head, I’m not sure what else can be done to unclog it?
I have read all the problems and truied the suggested fixes.
Sometime they work…sometimes they don’t.
I will print great 12 x 18 and 8 x 10 prints intermingled with banding problems on some but not all even if multiple copies of same photo.
Tried the deep cleaning, head alignment, roller cleaning, q tip and alcohol cleaning and head replacement….results still erratic.
Anybody have another solution?
Does Canon have a solution?
Or is it time for a Pro 9000
Any tips would be appreciated.
Just checking in, been busy. I see more entries on the i9900. I have a Mac g4 and I print mostly from Quark, but sometimes right from Photoshop or Illustrator.
I’m wondering if the printer needs to print more often to keep it working properly. While I was printing a lot of projects for school I had no problems with it but when I didn’t use it for a week or two I noticed the colors not looking as correct, then the major problem of not printing the red. I’m going to try and print something at least once a week to see if that keeps it working cleanly.
I forgot to say that I only use Canon papers. Either the photo paper or the high resolution. Other papers do not work well, and usually look muddy. Or at least I have not found one that works well, which is a bit frustrating. Any suggestions on papers other than Canon for this printer?