Radio Shack Ink FAQ

We guarantee our cartridges 100%. If you try our product and for any reason feel dissatisfied we will immediately replace the cartridge with a replacement cartridge.

No, Federal law prohibits any company or person from requiring you to purchase their OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) product. The Federal Trade Commission protects your rights as a consumer to purchase the product or service of your choice. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, Subparagraph C, Section 101, states this consumer protection law.

Each HP remanufactured cartridge goes through a comprehensive process including disassembly, cleaning, filling, component replacement and quality testing. Our cartridges are 100% post-tested to ensure that you receive the highest-quality cartridge.

Yes we have invested extensive time and money in our Research & Development Department to ensure that a comparative page count is achieved on each cartridge we sell.

Each cartridge is quality tested to ensure its operational status. Our Quality Control Facilitators make sure only properly functioning cartridges are approved to sell.

The printer or the computer is not recognizing the cartridge.

• The tape covering the printhead is still on the cartridge and has not been removed.
• The printer may need to be turned off and on before the cartridge is installed.
• The contacts on the cartridge or printer may have dirt or debris on them.
• A clip on the cartridge is preventing the circuitry from contacting.

• Ensure the tape has been removed from the cartridge.
• Gently wipe the circuitry on cartridge and printer with a soft towel or tissue to remove debris.
• Remove the clip that was placed on the cartridge to prevent leakage during storage.
• If another cartridge fails, the printer may need to be cleaned by a professional.
• Turn the printer off and then back on before installing cartridge.
• Gently wipe the underneath of the cartridge holding carriage with a towel.
• The printer may need to be analyzed by a professional.

No ink is being delivered to the paper.

• The nozzles are being obstructed from the outside.
• The nozzles are being obstructed from the inside.
• The ink is not feeding to the printhead.

• Ensure the tape or clip covering the cartridge has been removed.
• Gently wipe the underneath of the cartridge with a soft towel or tissue moistened with water.
• Use the printer service software to run at least three cleaning cycles.

Debris is being dragged through the wet ink as it is being printed.

• Dirt or debris is clinging to the cartridge or cartridge holding carriage.

• Gently wipe the underneath of the cartridge with a soft towel or tissue moistened with water.
• Gently wipe the underneath of the cartridge holding carriage with a towel.
• The printer may need to be analyzed by a professional.

The letters on the end of the product name actually indicates the amount of ink that a Hewlett Packard OEM cartridge contains. Regardless of the letter at the end, the physical cartridges are exactly the same.

Some of our inkjet cartridges, particularly those for HP, Lexmark and Compaq are shipped in a protective plastic shipping clip. This may cause the cartridge to appear like it won't fit inside the printer. Please remove the shipping clip. After removing the clip, the cartridge look exactly the same as your original cartridge.

HP remanufactured cartridges have been recycled to meet or exceed OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) specifications. They recycling process involves disassembling, inspecting, cleaning, reassembling and filling the product with ink.

The printhead is the most critical component of our printer – it is used to deliver the ink to the page that you are printing. Don’t touch the printhead with your fingers.

Your printhead is a consumable that can wear out over time, much like the brakes on your car. It requires proper installation and ongoing maintenance to ensure the long life of service for your printer. Most print quality problems are a direct result of improper care of the printhead. Proper installation, ongoing attention and maintenance are the keys to maximizing the life of a printhead.

The circuitry that is seen on some cartridges (such as some HP Cartridges) is the ink delivery system or printhead. This mechanism is a system of nozzles that are used to push ink onto the paper.

Nozzles, or "jets" are located on the printhead. There may be anywhere from 48 to 320 nozzles on any printhead, and each of them is smaller than human hair.

Each nozzle is connected electronically to a heater (resistor) that actually heats and cools the ink inside the cartridge. When the ink is head, a bubble is formed. When the heat is removed, the bubble bursts and sends dots of ink through the nozzles and onto the paper in the printer.

This happens very quickly, creating dots that form print characters on the page at a rate of up to 6,000 drops per second. That is why you should never touch the nozzle or print head assembly with your fingers.

Some of our inkjet cartridges, particularly those for HP, are shipped in a protective plastic shipping clip. This may cause the cartridge to appear like it won't fit inside the printer.

Please remove the shipping clip. After removing the clip, the cartridge will look exactly the same as your original cartridge.

An adhesive tape can be found on some models of inkjets. It may be one of several different colors and is used to protect the print head during transportation.

Please remove the adhesive tape before installing the cartridge into your printer.

Also, please do not use any other type of tape to protect the print head of your cartridge when you remove it from the printer. Sticky tape will push the glue resin into the nozzles of the printhead, thereby clogging them.

Because your monitor and printer use different technologies to represent colors, your printed colors cannot exactly match the colors you see on your monitor screen. Try using the ICM (Windows 95 or 98, XP) or ColorSync (Macintosh) setting. Refer to your User's Guide for more information.

Verify that you are using the correct printer driver for your printer model. Let the printer driver automatically select the settings for the best quality. The paper you are using may be damaged, old, dirty or loaded incorrectly. Remove the paper and reload a new stack ensuring that the printable side is face up. Run the head cleaning utility. Perform up to 4 cycles if necessary. The resolution of your image may also be set too low. Increase the image resolution using your image-editing software, or decrease the size of the image. Another troubleshooting test to try is moving the printer to another computer. This will eliminate the possibility of a defective printer cable, parallel port, or software issue.

If the printer is printing blank pages, make sure you are using the correct printer driver and make sure the paper size is correctly selected in the driver. If the printer is printing black only, the Ink option in the printer driver may be set to Black instead of Color or a setting in the software may be set to print black only.

Also, the print head nozzles may be clogged. Perform a head cleaning, NO MORE than 4! If there are still gaps in the dot pattern, Try our Canon print head cleaning cartridges... They WORK! They are listed along with the compatible Canon ink cartridges here.

For Printers which use the BCI21-B, BCI21-C or BCI21-E Canon ink cartridges, over time the print head will wear out and must be replaced in order to continue producing acceptable printouts.

The print head nozzles may be clogged. Perform a head cleaning and print a test print. If there are gaps in the dot pattern, continue with another cycle. Perform up to 6 cycles if necessary.

To prevent drying and possibly clogging of the print head, it is recommended you print something in color once a week. Try this if the color print is 'light' or missing in spots.

We guarantee our cartridges 100%. If you try our product and for any reason feel dissatisfied we will immediately replace the cartridge with a replacement.

No, Federal law prohibits any company or person from requiring you to purchase their OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) product. The Federal Trade Commission protects your rights as a consumer to purchase the product or service of your choice. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, Subparagraph C, Section 101, states this consumer protection law.

Each Lexmark remanufactured cartridge goes through a comprehensive process including disassembly, cleaning, filling, component replacement and quality testing. Our cartridges are 100% post-tested to ensure that you receive the highest-quality cartridge.

Yes we have invested extensive time and money in our Research & Development Department to ensure that a comparative page count is achieved on each cartridge we sell.

Lexmark remanufactured cartridges have been recycled to meet or exceed OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) specifications. They recycling process involves disassembling, inspecting, cleaning, reassembling and filling the product with ink.

The printhead is the most critical component of your printer – it is used to deliver the ink to the page that you are printing. Don’t touch the printhead with your fingers.

Your printhead is a consumable that can wear out over time, much like the brakes on your car. It requires proper installation and ongoing maintenance to ensure the long life of service for your printer. Most print quality problems are a direct result of improper care of the printhead. Proper installation, ongoing attention and maintenance are the keys to maximizing the life of a printhead.

The circuitry that is seen on some cartridges (such as some Lexmark Cartridges) is the ink delivery system or printhead. This mechanism is a system of nozzles that are used to push ink onto the paper.

Nozzles, or "jets" are located on the printhead. There may be anywhere from 48 to 320 nozzles on any printhead, and each of them is smaller than human hair.

Each nozzle is connected electronically to a heater (resistor) that actually heats and cools the ink inside the cartridge. When the ink is head, a bubble is formed. When the heat is removed, the bubble bursts and sends dots of ink through the nozzles and onto the paper in the printer.

This happens very quickly, creating dots that form print characters on the page at a rate of up to 6,000 drops per second. That is why you should never touch the nozzle or print head assembly with your fingers.

Some of our inkjet cartridges, particularly those for HP, are shipped in a protective plastic clip. This may cause the cartridge to appear like it won't fit inside the printer.

Please remove the shipping clip. After removing the clip, the cartridge will look exactly the same as your original cartridge.

An adhesive tape can be found on some models of inkjets. It may be one of several different colors and is used to protect the print head during transportation.

Please remove the adhesive tape before installing the cartridge into your printer.

Also, please do not use any other type of tape to protect the print head of your cartridge when you remove it from the printer. Sticky tape will push the glue resin into the nozzles of the printhead, thereby clogging them.

The printer's indicator lights will inform you when it is time to obtain a replacement ink cartridge and when it is time to replace an empty cartridge. To find out which ink cartridge is empty, check Status Monitor 3 (for Windows 98, 95, 2000, XP and NT 4.0) or StatusMonitor (for Macintosh). You can also tell which cartridge is empty by checking the speed at which the error light flashes when the print head moves to the ink cartridge replacement position. Replace the black ink cartridge if the error light flashes at the same speed as the power light. Replace the color ink cartridge if the error light flashes at twice the speed of the power light. Replace both the black and the color ink cartridges if this light remains on.

You cannot print if either ink cartridge is empty. Leave the empty cartridge installed in the printer until you have obtained a replacement. Otherwise the ink remaining in the print head nozzles may dry out. It's best to always have an extra cartridge on hand. When you need new ink cartridges, contact your dealer.

When an ink cartridge is installed into the printer, it will take approximately a minute to charge the ink system and initialize the printer. While the ink is charging the power light will flash. Never turn off the printer while the power light is flashing (unless the power light is flashing AND the printer has not moved or made noise for over 5 minutes). This initialization is a normal and necessary process.

Turn off the printer and computer. Make sure the printer cable is securely connected to the printer and computer ports. Turn on the printer and computer and try printing again. If the cable was not the issue, turn off the printer and computer, disconnect the interface cable and run a nozzle check. If the nozzle check works, try checking for and deleting any stalled print jobs.

The print head nozzles may be clogged. From the Utility section , clean the print heads by performing a head cleaning followed by printing a nozzle check pattern. A head cleaning and nozzle check should be performed as a cycle. After printing a nozzle check, examine the printed dot pattern. Each staggered horizontal and straight vertical line should be complete, with no gaps in the dot pattern. If there are gaps in the dot pattern, continue with another cycle. If print quality hasn't improved after repeating this procedure four or five times, turn the printer off and leave it alone overnight. Then, do the head cleaning again. If the print quality still has not improved, one or both of your ink cartridges may be old or damaged and may need to be replaced.

To keep the print head clear, the printer uses a small amount of ink from all the cartridges whenever it prints. Even if you select Black Only, some color ink is still beng used.

Power the printer on and press the Maintenance button to see if paper will load. If no paper loads, make sure the paper isn't curled or creased, isn't loaded above the arrow on the left edge guide, and that the paper isn't jammed in the printer. If the Paper Out light is on solid, reload the paper, making sure the paper edge guide is adjusted to fit the paper's width, and then press the Maintenance button again to see if the paper will now load. If the Paper Out light is flashing, turn the printer off, reload the paper, turn the printer back on, and try pressing the Maintenance button again to see if the printer will now successfully load the paper. If the printer still will not load paper, power the printer off, remove the printer cable.

Make sure the paper you are using meets specifications. Remove the stack of paper and fan the edges to separate the sheets. Reload the paper, then press the Maintenance button to see if it feeds the paper correctly.

We guarantee our cartridges 100%. If you try our product and for any reason feel dissatisfied we will immediately replace the cartridge with a replacement cartridge.

No, Federal law prohibits any company or person from requiring you to purchase their OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) product. The Federal Trade Commission protects your rights as a consumer to purchase the product or service of your choice. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, Subparagraph C, Section 101, states this consumer protection law.

Each Dell remanufactured cartridge goes through a comprehensive process including disassembly, cleaning, filling, component replacement and quality testing. Our cartridges are 100% post-tested to ensure that you receive the highest-quality cartridge.

Yes we have invested extensive time and money in our Research & Development Department to ensure that a comparative page count is achieved on each cartridge we sell.

Dell and Newer Lexmark printers will receive the low ink message when using compatible cartridges. Rest assured, our compatible cartridges provide as much yield as the OEM.

• Software will communicate that cartridges are empty when they are not. (Dell)
• The code is hard written into the circuits. We can’t change the ink counter or we infringe on patents.
• Click through and continue to print. You can’t hurt the cartridge or the printer.
• Light may stay on and message may continue to scroll saying the cartridge is empty.

Dell remanufactured cartridges have been recycled to meet or exceed OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) specifications. The recycling process involves disassembling, inspecting, cleaning, reassembling and filling the product with ink.

The printhead is the most critical component of your printer – it is used to deliver the ink to the page that you are printing. Don’t touch the printhead with your fingers.

Your printhead is a consumable that can wear out over time, much like the brakes on your car. It requires proper installation and ongoing maintenance to ensure the long life of service for your printer. Most print quality problems are a direct result of improper care of the printhead. Proper installation, ongoing attention and maintenance are the keys to maximizing the life of a printhead.

The circuitry that is seen on some cartridges (such as some DELLCartridges) is the ink delivery system or printhead. This mechanism is a system of nozzles that are used to push ink onto the paper.

Nozzles, or "jets" are located on the printhead. There may be anywhere from 48 to 320 nozzles on any printhead, and each of them is smaller than human hair.

Each nozzle is connected electronically to a heater (resistor) that actually heats and cools the ink inside the cartridge. When the ink is head, a bubble is formed. When the heat is removed, the bubble bursts and sends dots of ink through the nozzles and onto the paper in the printer.

This happens very quickly, creating dots that form print characters on the page at a rate of up to 6,000 drops per second. That is why you should never touch the nozzle or print head assembly with your fingers.

Some of our inkjet cartridges, particularly those for DELL are shipped in a protective plastic clip. This may cause the cartridge to appear like it won't fit inside the printer. Please remove the shipping clip. After removing the clip, the cartridge will look exactly the same as your original cartridge.

An adhesive tape can be found on some models of inkjets. It may be one of several different colors and is used to protect the print head during transportation. Please remove the adhesive tape before installing the cartridge into your printer.

Also, please do not use any other type of tape to protect the print head of your cartridge when you remove it from the printer. Sticky tape will push the glue resin into the nozzles of the printhead, thereby clogging them.