Try this
Clean the carriage rail. This is the round chrome piece that the carriage assy that holds the cartidges rides on. Use a paper towel that is slightly moist.
Be sure to not force anything. Unplug the printer after you get the carts in the middle. Move them to one side and clean and then move them to the other and repeat.
another problem
Problem: Paper jams, prints crooked
Solution: As many users have posted, shaking the printer upside down to try to get foreign objects out works pretty well. In my case there were a bunch of Styrofoam peanuts in there from packing it one time. I had to take it all apart and put it back together.
Problem: Doesn’t recognize that there is paper loaded
Solution: After taking apart my printer for the last problem there was one part that I didn’t know where it went back in. I believe now that it was the sensor for detecting if paper was in the tray. I left it off to the side, hanging by its wire. There’s a small circuit board on it, with 4 stiff wires connecting to it and holding it in place. I took a paper clip and shorted all the wires together - the error went away.
Problem: Tries to print test page every time the printer turns on. Started after completing the previous two solutions.
Solution: ?? It went away eventually. May have been related to changing to Windows 7 and upgrading the driver.
Problem: Windows Vista driver not compatible with Windows 7.
Solution: Windows 7 compatible driver (may want to uninstall and clean up all current drivers [google for cleanup tool]):
http://support.dell.com
Problem: Having trouble scanning.
Solution: Turn on printer. Open Dell All-in-one center on computer. Go to scan tab there and select options, etc. This seemed to work better than choosing to scan from the printer buttons.
Problem: Open document, hit print, printer does nothing. Print job manager on computer says it is printing but nothing ever happens. Hit cancel on job manager, changes status to Printing-Deleting, but still nothing ever happens. Cannot delete job, cannot print anything else.
Solution: Restart computer. Even if you have tried to cancel the job it may still print. Make sure there are no other jobs in line behind it. Try to avoid sending a print job to the printer while it’s still finishing another. This seems to cause the error more often, but it can happen randomly.
Problem: Scanner is cropping and only scanning small parts of it. I want to scan the whole page.
Solution: Scan using the Dell All-in-one center. Go under See More Scan Options > Advanced, and choose Select Area to be Scanned (instead of Auto-Crop). Choose your paper size.
CURRENT PROBLEM:
Problem: Plugged in and turned on printer. No light on power button, no screen light, no reaction to power button. Only activity is about once a minute the cartridges will move a bit right, then left and click a couple times. Then the roller that normally spits out the paper closest to the output will spin very quickly for a beat (sounds like a scraping noise). No buttons do anything. Power cycling does nothing (plugging- unplugging). Tested on different outlets, attempting to print says Communication is unavailable.
