How to Stop a Printer From Printing Extra Alignment Pages

You've already aligned your all-in-one Hewlett Packard printer, but it's still printing extra alignment pages every time you turn it on or try to print a document. Perhaps you've already aligned the print cartridge several times and are getting frustrated. Luckily, there's a simple way to stop it.

Things You'll Need

• Printer paper
• Ink cartridge

Instructions

1. Hold down the "cancel" and "on" buttons on your printer at the same time, and then release them.

2. Press "cancel," "resume," "paper type" and "color start copy" in that order.

3. Allow an alignment page to print automatically.

4. Click "continue" on the dialog box on your computer screen that takes you through the alignment process.

5. Unplug your printer from your CPU.

6. Scan the alignment page in your printer.

Tips & Warnings

• Aligning the page with the printer and computer disconnected from one another is called a "standalone alignment." When you print from a disconnected printer, the printer "knows" that it is printing an alignment page.

• The most important part of this procedure is unplugging the USB cable that connects your printer to your computer. If you don't unplug the cable, the alignment will fail because your scanner will try to scan the alignment page to the computer, like it would any scanned image.

• It's more than just a waste of time, ink and paper when the printer keeps printing an extra alignment page. The fact that the printer isn't communicating properly with the computer also means documents can get stuck in the print queue. If this happens, turn off your computer before you plug the USB cable back in, then turn it back on to resume printing.