Hi all

I am new here and am hopeful that someone will be able to assist me with my problem.

I run win XP Professional (SP3) on my desktop computer. I bought an Epson Stylus C91 printer about 16 months ago. Apart from the initial few times that I'd bought Epson replacement cartridges, I switched to a generic, compatible brand to save money.

Every now and again, the printer would SUDDENLY refuse to print, stating that one or more of the cartridges were not compatible. This would happen after I'd been printing for some time and before the ink runs out. I initially took my printer to the computer shop where I buy the ink (and where I'd bought the printer) and they said that the cartridges worked fine on their XP system after they'd installed the printer software on the CD supplied with the printer. They even sent the cartridges to the suppliers who said the same: no problem with the cartridges.

Ths initially happened out of the blue and I frustratedly replaced the cartridge. Then, one day, the printer ran out of paper and after I'd put more paper in and clicked on "proceed", it said that two cartridges were incompatible. I simply had to buy new cartridges as no amount of persuasion could get the printer to recognize the cartridges it had seen as compatible a few minutes before, as compatible anymore.

I did manage to uninstall and re-install the software at one stage and it accepted the cartridges as compatible on only one occasion. All other instances of uninstalling and re-installing failed to achieve the same result.

That is where I am at the moment: Some software thing says my cartridges are incompatible again, two days after me installing brand new compatible cartridges. The printer (again) ran out of paper and now refuses to accept the cartridges. I uninstalled and re-installed the software with the CD, I even did so using Windows and not the CD, I physically removed any Epson values from my registry after any uninstall and had a registry checker check my registry for problems but after every re-install, my printer still says that I have incompatible cartridges installed.

Please remember that these cartridges worked fine until the printer ran out of paper!

The guy at the computer shop said that they had found that if they replaced the "faulty" cartridges with new ones and then replace the "faulty" ones at some later stage, that the fault resolved of its own and that the cartridges would be recognised as compatible. I did this and one cartrigde previously found to be incompatible was suddenly OK, but the others not.

Please, anybody, what can I do to prevent this problem, apart from buying original HP ink?

Kind regards

Harry