Paper Jam on a HP Deskjet 450

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Jack

This seems to be a fairly common issue on this printer model. The paper will jam just as it passes the exit rollers. Sometimes the paper will skew with just one side feeding and the other side stuck. You’ll see two black rollers at the exit slot of the printer. Sometimes one and more commonly both rollers will just not pick up the paper anymore and cause the paper jam. If you’re up to it, pull out the screwdriver and unscrew the case and then pull apart the top and bottom plastic casing. My first try at this resulted in breaking one of the plastic tabs located internally at the front of the case. It is not the most user friendly device to take apart. The objective is to get access to the two black rollers at the exit slot and swab them with alcohol. If you get the case open, go ahead and clean the rollers really well. If you prefer not to open the case, you can try alcohol on a q-tip, print a test page without paper loaded and when the rollers start turning, quickly swab and clean the rollers. You might have to do this a few times to get it clean. Once the rollers are clean, it should once again paper feed without jamming.

Posted in Hardware, HP Deskjet 450, Paper Jam, Printer | Leave a comment

No audio but the sound device is detected in device manager

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Jack

If the sound is not working and the sound device is active and enabled in device manager then it’s quite possible the “Windows Audio” Service is not running. To check, go to “Start” -> “All Programs” -> “Administrator Tools” and select “Services”. In the list of services, scroll down to “Windows Audio” and double click on it. The Startup type should be set to automatic and the service status should show started. If it is not started, press the “Start” button. On some slower machines that are overloaded with start up services and applications, it’s possible not all of the services will start in a timely manner such as the Windows Audio service. If the service continually does not start on boot up, look into disabling some of the start up programs or services.

Posted in Audio, Sound | Leave a comment

Frozen screen using Juno dial up

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Jack

Yes you read that right, dial up! I had one client that called and said the screen would turn gray and she would not be able to do anything. Mind you this was an older lady that was using Juno dial up because it was free and she only used it for emails and to check out library books online. For the life of me, I could not figure it out over the phone, the mouse still moved, so it wasn’t frozen or crashed, and a “gray” screen would randomly come and go? what’s that all about? So I broke down and had to do a home visit, it appears if the built in Juno web browser is processing a request and the user is trigger happy and clicking on the screen, the application will “gray” out with a “Not responding”. Then once the request is complete the screen will return to normal. So really, nothing technical to fix, just needed to explain to the user they had to be more patient.

Posted in Dial Up, Frozen, Juno | Leave a comment

SMTP Port 25 not working on GoDaddy email setup

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Jack

Usually setting up pop email accounts is pretty straight forward but for some reason I had some difficulties with GoDaddy.com. Incoming worked great and I had no problems with that, it was the out going SMTP that was the issue. By default SMTP is usually sent over port 25 and on most email clients it will default the SMTP port to 25. Even GoDaddy.com‘s instructions say you can use port 25 (as well as 80, 3535) but it just didn’t work for me on two different devices (a iPhone and Scan to email device). After a bit of frustration, I tried port 80 and that worked like a charm. Both devices was able to send out emails! I’m not sure if it was the service provider blocking port 25 or GoDaddy was just having a bad day that day but I suggest try port 80 if port 25 does not work for you.

Posted in Email, Pop, SMTP | Leave a comment

How to revive a drained Lithium Ion Laptop Battery

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Jack

Many of us that have owned a laptop have noticed that their battery eventually just does not last as long. In my case I was cleaning out some of my hardware stockpile and came across an old Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop, I think this was produced around 2002, so a good 9 years old! I plugged it in and pressed the power button and it booted! Windows showed the battery was at 2% so I charged it overnight. In the morning it still showed 2%, I unplugged the power and it lasted a whole 10 seconds before windows caused the machine to shut down. So a trick a lot of techs have learned is windows is shutting down the machine because the battery is reporting such a low percentage available. It is possible the battery is reporting an incorrect percentage and it might have more power than it thinks. To see if that is the case with your laptop, first turn off the setting that shuts down the machine when the battery reports a low percentage:

  1. Go to the control panel
  2. click on “hardware and sound”
  3. click on “power options”
  4. You will see a section with radio button choices, find the radio button that is selected and to the right you’ll see the words “Change plan settings”, click on that.
  5. This will bring you to a screen that shows you what occurs when the laptop is on battery or plugged in. At the bottom are 2 links, one of them is for “Change advanced power settings”, click on that.
  6. A screen pops up displaying “Power Options”, In the list is “Battery”, expand that and in the list of items is “Critical battery action” and “Low battery action”, expand both of those and “On Battery” change the value to “Do Nothing”.

Charge up the battery overnight and then unplug the power. In my case the Dell showed 2% battery and the previous power setting told it to shut down if the battery was less than 5%. In the past it would have shut down at this point. My battery started to beep to indicate it was about to die. Well, guess what, it beeped for a whole hour before it eventually died. So even though it reported 2%, it had much more power in it and was just reporting an incorrect power level to windows. Now that it was truly drained, charge up the battery again and repeat the drain, do this a few times and the battery will start to report a somewhat more accurate but maybe still not the correct percentage to windows. Mine now showed 100% and lasts about 90 minutes. Though not perfect, you’ll actually be able to run your laptop off the battery for a while and maybe stay off the need to buy a new battery for a few months.

Posted in Battery, Hardware, Laptop, Lithium Ion | Leave a comment

LCD touch screen calibration on a Savin copier

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Jack

While setting up a network at an office, the owner asked if I knew anything about copiers, I should have said no! The LCD touch screen calibration was way off, you basically had to touch below and to the right of the button you want to activate. A bit of Google searching and I found how to access the calibration menu item. From this copytechnet.com article, user D_L_P, mentions you have to press the yellow Reset button, followed by the numbers 1,9,9,3 in sequence and then the red stop key 5 times. One annoying thing is while pressing the 1993 sequence (and it might be just this Savin model: 8025), pressing 1, the machine beeps, pressing 9, the machine beeps, pressing the next 9 the machine beeps, then the final 3, the machine DOES NOT beep. This makes you think you did not press the button or it did not register and you end up pressing it again. It did however register and for some reason does not beep. Once you finish that sequence, and pressing the stop button 5 times, you are presented with a set of menu items, to calibrate is item #1. It will then ask you to use a sharp object and press a tiny little circle on the screen, I just used the end of a key, then it requests you press a second circle with the sharp object. Once that is done you are finished and the LCD should be calibrated.

Posted in Calibration, Copier, Hardware, Savin, Savin 8025 | Leave a comment

Paper jam on a Samsung CLP-315

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Jack

When attempting to print on this unit, it would immediately paper jam with about half an inch of the paper making it past the top roller and sticking out. At first i thought it was the top roller not grabbing onto the paper and feeding it the rest of the way out. Using a little alcohol on a cotton swab I cleaned the top roller, without any luck, the paper still jammed. YouTube to the rescue again, this video by sts121, shows what the problem is. There is a small sensor in the unit and I’m not exactly sure what the sensor controls but replacing it seems to have fixed the paper jamming problem. You can also try just cleaning the sensor with an alcohol swab but that appears to only be a temporary fix. Ordering the part directly from Samsung for some reason results in a part that is slightly too big and you have to shave it down a little to make it fit. In the comments section of the YouTube video, Forhorse88 mentions you can buy the part from Digikey.com, part number 425-2449-ND. This part appears to be the same sensor and size, and does not require shaving it down. The printer is just like new now!

11/5/11 An update to this article. The printer came back, so that fix didn’t last long (for me at least). Maybe it was just fluke that it printed after replacing the sensor or it’s a different problem now. I guess I’ll just say, it’s only $4 to have the part shipped to you and 15 minutes of your time to replace it. There’s not much to lose by doing it, and the printer can’t be used when it jams on every page, so I say get the sensor and hopefully it’ll fix your problem.

Posted in Hardware, Paper Jam, Printer, Samsung CLP-315 | Leave a comment

No sound on a HP DV6000

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Jack

I came across a HP DV6000 that was having an issue where the sound was not working. A re-install of the factory Vista operating system did not help and in fact the sound hardware was not even showing up in the device manager. This lead me to believe it must be a hardware problem and not a driver issue. I came across this YouTube video created by djjor3I and it was the answer I was looking for. It appears that the power ribbon also handles the sound and overtime it wears out from pushing the power button. In the video the ribbon in question is the one on the left. A new ribbon can be found cheaply on ebay, just search for “12 pin dv6000” or here on Amazon.com or if you don’t use the quick launch buttons (the ribbon on the right in the video), it is also a 12 pin ribbon and you can switch the two. Once the ribbon was replaced, the sound card was detected in device manager and once the drivers were installed, the sound worked great again!

Posted in Driver, Hardware, HP DV6000, Laptop, Sound | Leave a comment