IPF 2000 not recognizing PhotoCyan Cart

[LSawyer]

My IPF2000 has suddenly decided it doesn't recognize the Cyan cartridge. This issue has never happened before; the printer has been sitting idle for about three weeks. Everything was working fine prior to this. The machine just suddenly, without warning, decided that cartridge was either not there, or not installed correctly. 

That particular cartridge is an STS brand. Those have worked fine in my printer for many months and many hundreds of prints.

I've installed updated firmware; also turned the printer off and cycled on/off several times. Nothing changes. 

Advice?

[jrhoffman75]

Do you have a second cartridge to try? That would separate a cartridge problem vs printer problem.

[LSawyer]

I don't. That was my first thought but I'll need to order one now in order to run that test. In the meantime I updated the firmware, to no avail. 

[jrhoffman75]

Does the printer allow you to easily remove and replace a cartridge? If so, what if you swap two cartridges and see what happens. 

[LSawyer]

I can try that. I assumed it would reject a color in the wrong spot, and basically give me the same message. 

[LSawyer]

Ok, I swapped the Magenta and Photo Cyan. It then showed an error for both cart positions, same type of error, telling me to install the ink cart(s) correctly. I swapped them back to original positions, and the original error came back for just the PCyan. So to me, that implies a wiring or software issue reading the existence of a cartridge in the PCyan position. It's localized. Am I missing anything? If I'm right, I see no solution other than having a technician come out...probably at a very, very high cost. Is there a rom-reset type of thing that can be done to clear out that error and ask the machine to start over? 

[jrhoffman75]

It does look like a printer issue. You could give Canon a call at 1-800-OK-CANON and see what they advise. 

[LSawyer · Accepted solution]

Problem solved. It was the STS ink cart not being recognized by my printer. I bought a Canon OEM cart and all is well. As the Canon Tech Support guy said, third-party inks are fine, until they aren't. Which mine was.