Originally Posted by
FalconFour
JustManuals and Eric1968, would you like to know how this happens? Why people run "flash format" when the service manual 'clearly' says that it should never be used in the field?
Because the service manuals ARE NOT PUBLIC INFORMATION. So when we, the public, are left on our own, Googling high and low to try solving a problem, unable to find any service manuals or information about our particular model (in my case, C6050 - yeah, try Googling info for that model!)... we're left trying to piece together broken bits of information. In my case, I had a printer that was on its way to the trash bin due to having a broken LED strip mount. I fixed it up by drilling out the plastic mount point and securing it with a screw - good as new, I thought? I wanted to test it, but it refused to operate due to thinking the magenta toner was empty - though it had plenty. So, without being willing to commit a new cartridge's price to this unknown printer, I tried going through the service menus to reset its toner life.
I spent an entire night just trying to access the service menu, because information on this printer was so hard to find. All I could ever find was a guide for another model, and by sheer trial-and-error, I tried pressing different buttons (+ and -) and got into it. At that point, I was all on my own, and the only option I could find possibly useful was NV Init/Flash Format.
All I ended up doing was wiping my NIC firmware and corrupting the printer. After replacing the toner anyway, the printer worked fine, but only by USB.
That is why I am here now. I don't have "in" connections in the behind-the-scenes world of printer equipment, so I can't exactly offer a "fair" trade. But that's why forums like this exist. People help other people out. Though a fair number of these posts appear to be mentally void individuals bumming for handouts, some of them are knowledgeable, skilled people that found themselves trapped on the wrong side of an information firewall. And it's made worse by people emailing or PMing files directly to one another instead of posting the files directly in the forums for everyone to use.
We just want some information, and since these forums are the only thing Google ever provides when trying to find information, that's where people land. The condescending replies saying to "contact a certified technician", time after time, thread after thread, issue after issue, get very old after a while.
Leave out the snark - put a price tag on your services if it's the freeloading you're worried about. If you're on here because you want to help people out for free, then don't be an ass about it!
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