Unlocking the Secrets of Canon Cartridge Refills

You’re about to print something important, and right at that crucial moment, the ink cartridge is empty. Thankfully, that’s no longer a major issue. For printers with pricey cartridges, you can often use cheap Cartridge Refills instead of buying new ones. Nowadays, nearly every city has “cartridge refill stations” available for this purpose. Since my cartridges had been working flawlessly up to that point, I thought refilling them would be a smart choice — especially since I’d done this with other printers and cartridges before, without any problems. So, I refilled both cartridges, got home, popped them back into the printer, and voila — everything was working perfectly again.

The Problem

A few weeks later, I was surprised to find my printer had stopped working again. “I haven’t printed that much,” I thought, and began troubleshooting. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t an issue of ink running out — the printer was showing an “Error 5.” Consulting the manual revealed that this meant the cartridges weren’t recognized or weren’t correctly inserted. Odd, since they’d been working just fine up until then.

Researching the Cartridge Refills Issue

I turned to the internet and Google for answers. Generally, “Error 5” means the printer didn’t recognize the chip on a cartridge. This often points to a defective cartridge that needs replacing. In my case, the printer software indicated that neither cartridge was recognized. Fortunately, as a regular at my nearby “printer refill station,” I was able to borrow a test cartridge — a colored one — to troubleshoot. When I installed it at home, everything worked again, and the black cartridge was also recognized. The error disappeared, even though the printer had previously claimed both cartridges were faulty.

The Solution

A bit more online research helped me uncover the solution. The printer doesn’t actually detect the exact ink level in the cartridges, but it does eventually sense that the cartridge should be empty. If only one cartridge is “empty,” you can convince the printer to continue printing with the “empty” (refilled) cartridge. However, if it detects that both cartridges should be empty, it refuses to print and throws up Error 5. The only fix is to replace one of the cartridges with a new one, although just one replacement is sufficient even if the software suggests otherwise. From now on, I plan to keep refilling the black cartridge and reluctantly replace the colored one with a new cartridge after one or two refills.

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