Is Your Printer Printing Lines? Here are 4 Quick Ways to Fix it

If your printer is printing lines, there’s something unwanted stuck to the printhead. And it is not letting the ink spray correctly to the paper.

I clearly remember having a hair strand stuck to one of my HP printer’s printhead and facing the same issue😫

So how did I fix it?

Run the Printhead Cleaning Cycle

  • Open the Printing preferences of your printer from the Windows Settings.
    printing preferences of printer
  • Then, run the Printhead cleaning cycle.
    printhead cleaning cycle in canon printer
  • If one cycle of cleaning does not fix the problem, run it once more. You can even do it twice or thrice.

Note: As printhead cleaning consumes about 1-2 ml of ink per cycle, make sure your printer has sufficient ink levels beforehand.

Set the Print Quality to the Best Quality

Similarly, on the same Printing Preferences window, change the Print Quality to the Best or similar high quality option that is available.

high print quality set in printing preferences

Printing on a low/normal quality sometimes produces printout with unnecessary lines.

Align the Printhead

Another thing you can do is align the printhead of the printer.

The printhead misaligns from its original position with time that ultimately causes the printer to print lines.

  • Again, you can do this from the Printing Preferences.
    printhead alignment in canon printers
  • If available, you can also use the touch screen on your printer.

Bonus Tip: If you just changed the ink cartridge, make sure you removed the protective film that came with it. Otherwise, issues like this are common.

Clean the Entire Printer

Should there be anything lying between the printhead and the paper, ink cannot get correctly to the paper and result in line formations.

I recommend cleaning your printer with a blower or a can of compressed air. Mainly clean the paper path, paper roller (wheel) area and under the ink cartridges and you should be fine.

Conclusion

Honestly, it is not that difficult to fix it when your printer is printing lines. And I believe you fixed it already with the tips and tricks I discussed above😉

If nothing seems to work, you need to clean the printhead manually which is the one and only solution to this problem. (I will be writing on this soon)

If you have any queries, please let me know in the comment section below. PrinterArmy Deependra is always standby to fix your printer problems.

Meet Deependra Pangeni, the printer expert and founder of PrinterArmy.com. With a background in Computer Engineering and a huge collection of printers, Deependra knows all about printing. He shares his how-to guides, solutions and tips on PrinterArmy.com to help everyone print perfectly.

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