I had this same printer and this same problem.  I was told that this is due
to the small holes in the print head clogging up or the reservoir used to
hold ink that is shot through the head in cleaning filling up.  Both of
these problems happen to a lot of Canon inkjets after a couple of years of
service but the second case can be made worse by refilling ink cartridges
instead of using new ones all the time.  In either case, the only solution
I could find was to have the print head replaced which would have cost as
much as buying a new printer.  These printers are not designed to be fixed.
 They are intended as throw-aways which is one of the reasons for their
attractively low price.

At 06:49 PM 4/26/98 -0400, you wrote:
>hello all, i'm having a problem with my printer, it as a canon bubblejet
>bj-100 its about 3 years old and has always worked well up till now. when
i go
>to print anything, thers is a set of smudges running down the left side of
the
>paper, i've tried cleaning the "parking area" with a q-tip, used compressed
>air, even replaced the cartridge with no sucess, i really need this thing
>working quick  TIA
>philippe j beaulieu
>