Thank you, Hugh.  I purchased a new toner cartridge, and that seems to have 
fixed the problem.

1. I purchased the old toner cartridge at the same time that I bought the 
printer, about two or three years ago, in order to have a spare.  I just 
replaced the original cartridge within the last six months or so.  So, I 
guess the lesson is:  laser cartridges go bad over time.  Usually, you can 
make one print a little more by shaking it a bit, so it is not real 
necessary to keep one on hand if you are a casual user.

2. My old HP IV had a separate roller (a nice metal one) built in; the 
cartridge in the 1200 included a plastic roller, that was replaced when I 
put in a new cartridge.  Maybe they added that "feature" to solve the smear 
problems that I had had with my older printer.  Cleaning the metal roller 
always seemed to help a little, but the problem returned quickly.  Perhaps 
heavy users don't see that problem as much.

Dean Kukral

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hugh Vandervoort" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 1:38 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] HP 1200 horizontal smears


When I had this problem, I went to the HP site and they say to remove
the cartridge, clean it, and clean the cartridge tray.
This did no good. The answer was to replace the cartridge.
Read "Cleaning the media path" in the manual.


Dean Kukral wrote:
> My HP 1200 laser printer produces a series of horizontal smudges.  I 
> noticed
> that one smudge on a short document produced a smudged second copy of the
> printing.
>
> Does anyone know how to fix this problem?
>
> (My previous printer was an HP 4, which developed similar smudges.  I was
> never able to fix those.)
>
> TIA,
>
> Dean Kukral

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