January 19, 2016

Windows 10 rejecting remanufactured cartridges?

Neal McChristy told The Recycler that his remanufactured cartridges have been flagged as “used or counterfeit” upon installation.

McChristy, who writes the wide-format column for The Recycler, stated that he uses Windows 10 with an HP Envy 4500 printer, and having replaced two remanufactured cartridges with another pair from the same provider, and on printing, received an error stating “used or counterfeit cartridges detected”. McChristy noted that he has “never got this before”, and also “got several messages when I tried to print, but in the end, it printed OK”.

He added that he “disabled HP product detection in Windows 10’s settings, as I suspect this has something to do with it, but I’m not sure if that was what was causing the problem. Guess I’ll see, in time. You never know until later with Windows 10”. Other bugs in the new operating system have also affected McChristy’s “old workhorse” printer, the HP LaserJet 4 Plus, which “worked well until an upgrade last week, then would not print”. This was solved “after massive research”, as he “found a workaround by disabling the printer port, then enabling it, and have a Parallel Port to USB port cable on order that others say will permanently fix it”.

His self-built computer worked with Windows 10 until the 1511 update installed last week, after which “the printer would not work”, and over 100 posts by people “with similar set-ups” can be found on Microsoft’s support pages here. McChristy’s view is that Windows 10 is good “in terms of ease of use, but interference with the ability to print is a real pain. I tried to contact Microsoft, but they only have a chat, and hung up on me when I stated the problem – twice. I mean, they should do a patch or update to solve the HP legacy printer problem”.

HP’s advisory on cartridges meanwhile is “particularly troubling”, as “there is also a lot of pass-through to companies like HP that you only find are allowed by the programme after a while”. He ignores the messages and prints anyway, but points out that “I am sure there are those using remanufactured cartridges in Windows 10 that are intimidated into (as the Windows advisories suggest repeatedly) buying an original HP cartridge. A site even comes up for order!”

He concluded that he knows Windows 10 “has less than 10 percent of computers now”, but wants to warn of “these printing glitches that may impact the remanufactured products and customer use of them”. The Recycler previously looked into the compatibility of different OEMs’ printers with Windows 10, in a feature published in issue 275 starting on page 48, in which we found most OEMs had quite comprehensive information about compatibility, including HP.

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