Elsewhere you may have read that I bought a Canon printer after years of using HP printers.

Well, I found some un-used ink cartridges for my old HP Photosmart 7620, so I dusted the printer off and used it to print hardcopies of manuals and eGuides to finish off the ink.

This was fine for a few days (even though the paper-loading was a pain) and managed to print some decent copies of useful eGuides. Then the printer ran into a snag. No matter how I tried, the fault light would not go off. I deleted the driver and mounted the CD (yes, I sill have it) to re-install. What do you know? The CD gave an error message that my OS is not recognised (Vista). It’s supposed to be for up to XP only, that’s how old the printer is. OK, go to HP website to download the driver, and happily the support message says that the driver for Photosmart 7200 series is built-in the Vista OS. Connected the printer to my USB again, and indeed, Windows Vista recognises the printer and installed the driver. I must have done this before years ago, otherwise how did the printer work with my Vista PC in the first place? 

However, it still will not work.  On a hunch, I changed the black ink cartridge….and it worked! I guess it’s my fault for not knowing that the red alert light indicates empty ink cartridge. 

Oh well, I’ll mothball the printer again when the ink is finished.