I have a HP Deskjet 4100 series printer at home. I rarely require to print. So I sparingly use printer. I have hardly printed a few pages (less than 20 pages or so) since I bought it in Jan 2008. The last time I used my printer was in April 2009 to make a copy of 15H form (because my printer can scan and copy without switching on PC I use it mainly as a Photocopy machine and of course sometimes I require it to print some documents or web pages). But on July 11, 2009 (Precisely 3 months of not using the printer) when I went to make a copy (photocopy) of a page I got a rude shock when a blank page came out (although the printer behaved as though it was printing something on that page. But nothing got printed). After I checked the manual of my HP Printer it said that Ink of printer can dry if printer is not used for some period of time. So I feel that since I rarely use printer there is a chance that there may be ink in Catridge 21 (black cartridge) of my printer but it may not be printing it because nozzle opening may be blocking the ink from coming out. The manual states that I can either clean the nozzle opening with a wet cloth (which has been made wet by using distilled water since tap water can be contaminated). And if this doesn’t work then I have to replace the cartridge with a new one.

Now, I have following questions regarding my HP Inkjet Printer?

Question #1: Where exactly should I clean the cartridge with distilled water in order to clean the nozzle opening which might have got blocked by dried ink?

Question #2: How can I get distilled water in home (as far as I know there is only one way to get it and that is, I can open my pressure cooker and collect the water droplets formed on the inside of the lid of the pressure cooker and wipe a clean cotton cloth on it and make it wet and then rub that wet cotton cloth on the nozzle opening. Will this help? Instead of Distilled water can I use a floppy drive disk cleaning liquid (I have spare liquid remaining of the time when we used to clean floppy disk drives (in yesteryears) using floppy disks made for cleaning purpose by putting this liquid on them). The reason why I am asking you this is because this liquid evaporates and so it is often used to remove the moisture trapped in RAM chip holder (slot) of a PC. I actually saw a hardware professional removing my Pc’s RAM chip once and asking me for floppy drive cleaning liquid and putting it in the slot of RAM and then replacing the same RAM chip again in that slot and later when my PC started working properly he told me that some moisture had got trapped in the RAM slot and that putting that disk cleaner liquid in that slot and replacing that RAM chip in that slot resulted in moisture being replaced by the disk cleaning liquid and till the RAM chip was replaced that disk cleaning liquid also got evaporated at room temperature. And so I learnt that hardware engineers often use floppy disk cleaning liquids to clean up hardware stuff. So can I use such a disk cleaning liquid to clean the nozzle of printer cartridge (because it can clean and then evaporate)?

Question # 3: What is the cost of HP Original Cartridge 21 in India (in Mumbai)? (In case, I have no other option left but to throw existing cartridge which dried up without being used much).

Question # 4: What is the capacity of a HP Original Cartridge 21 (that is, how many A4 Pages does it print?)

Question # 5: If I rarely require to print documents how can I prevent drying up of ink that happens because of rare use of printer? Because if a cartridge say prints say 500 pages and I barely print 20 pages in an year (because I sparingly use printer) and my ink dries up and so I have to throw the cartridge because of that then I am at a huge loss (e.g. 500 Pages (Capacity of Cartridge) - 20 Pages (Per year that I require to print in an year)= 480 Pages of Catridge Capacity being lost). Again, just because printer ink dries up after a certain period of time it doesn’t make sense to keep printing pages (480 pages) without requiring to print such pages (because that would cause loss of valuable paper. So even environmentally it is not good).

Question # 6: What is the period of time in which ink starts drying up (if printer remains inactive in that period)? For example, Ink may be getting dried up if printer is not used for a month or so. Basically, I wish to know that period so that I can at least print a few lines in that period (for no good reason but just to prevent the ink from drying up). That’s why I wish to know the period of time for which I must not keep the printer inactive and thus preventing drying up of ink. So basically, suppose printer ink starts drying up in one month of not use then I can print an A4 Page at the end of the month (although I may not be having the requirement to print it but I will be using the printer just to prevent the printer catridge nozzle from being blocked up due to ink drying). So that will anyways
waste 12 pages an year but at least I won’t be required to throw away a cartridge (with a 480 pages of print capacity remaining) just because ink got dried up.

Question # 7: If you are a home maker or home user or Small Home Office User and have suffered the same plight of drying up of ink due to rare use of printer please tell me how did you overcome this problem?

Thanks Regards,

Anita Mallya.