Quick Tip: HP Deskjet F4400 Out of Paper

A quick tip for anyone still sporting the F4400 Deskjet printer from HP. A common problem I see online, as well have experienced in the past has been an ‘Out of Paper’ issue. There are no indicators on the printer when this happened, it was only when I looked at Windows Printers and seen the error message.

Just about every post online refers to the basic HP troubleshooting guide for this printer. Typical check to make sure you have common sense that the paper isn’t chewed up, that it has paper, etc. It’s a bit of a joke, but it likely would solve many of the cases, unfortunately it just ends up with the fact that if your issue isn’t solved by the brain-dead suggestions, you are out of luck.

I think I found the solution that would cover most of the other issues people have had, that aren’t resolved by the basic guide. The symptoms must however be the following:

• The printer doesn’t move and make any noise what soever. Forums discuss that a pickup roller (seen from the front right looking inwards with a flashlight above where your paper sits) might not be grabbing due to deterioration or paper stuck in it. But if there is no noise, its definitely not trying to grab anything and therefore its not the roller. If you have noise, just shine a flash light inside and watch as you hear the motors move, it’s quite simple and you might experience a quick a-ha moment.
• There are no indicators blinking on the printer. Windows may report an out of paper error when viewing printers (accessible from the start menu).
• Printing test page (from the guide, hold cancel, then while holding press the green colored button) changes nothing.

What I found is that the flag for sensing paper must be producing a false reading. It seems to become more probable when the paper level is less than 25% of a full load.

Shine a flashlight into the front of the printer, you will see a black rubber roller on the right, and a white lever on the left. The white lever is the paper sensor. Simply grab a something to push the lever back and up as far as you can go, holding this there for a couple seconds may be enough for you for the printer to reset the out-of-paper flag. Once windows reports it’s no longer out of paper or it tries to print, put a larger load of paper back in and see if it’s good from there on out.