At the beginning of the week I was having problems with my printer (a Canon MX300) because I had accidentally paused it.
It didn’t show up in CUPS or any other applications, and every couple minutes it would give me a “paused” message on the LCD that was impossible to clear without turning off the printer which meant restarting whatever job I was doing. So, if you want to sell toner cartridges for cash click here.
After some googling I found this website which suggested holding down buttons 6 and 3 while powering on, but when I did this nothing happened (I’m using Linux Mint 9 if anyone else is trying this). Searching for more information led me to discover that like many printers nowadays, un-pausing mine involved putting it in “service mode”, which required.
1. Check the printer to see if it is powered on.
Power on the printer by holding down the “OK” button for 5 seconds.
After this, I was told that pressing buttons 6 and 3 simultaneously should put my printer into service mode, but again nothing happened when I did this. Instead of un-pausing my printer we had 2 dead HP desk jets and one slightly-damaged Canon MX300 (the first step of service mode had wiped its firmware).
So before throwing away more printers and filing a complaint with Amazon , I decided to do some research on MX300s in general since there seemed to be so many common quirks about these printers online.
I came across various ways to get an MX300 out of paused state such as: Hold.
2. If not, turn it on and wait for a few minutes until it completes the Power-On Self Test (POST) and then press the button.
Hold buttons 6 and 3, then press the button to enter service mode.
The display shows ” TEST MODE” for a few seconds followed by “SERVICE MODE.”
Release both buttons.
I tried following these steps but again nothing happened when I held down the three buttons simultaneously.
After some more research, I found out that my MX300’s model number was not one listed on Canon’s website as being able to go into service mode even if you held down the right buttons (which is probably why it failed to work in step 4), so I decided to take things into my own hands since 1) this printer is only used for printing homework assignments, 2) it’s under warranty, and
Press the button on the printer that is located closest to the bottom of your printer. (For MX300, this is Service Button.)
But like my initial attempt with CUPS nothing happened when I did this.
After seeing that my MX300 did not have a service button, I nearly gave up until I realized that it did have an OK button.
3. Unplug the power cord from the wall outlet and turn off your printer using the
OK button on the printer. Your printer is now in service mode.
Plug the power cord back into the wall outlet and press OK for 3 seconds to turn your
printer off.
In this case, pressing OK for three seconds did nothing either even though it said that my printer was in service mode. This is when I decided to check out MX300 user manuals online and found the one from Canons website , which gave me a different set of instructions:
Release buttons 6 and 3. Then, press and hold button 4 while you plug the power cord back into the wall outlet and then release button 4.
4. Plug in the power cord again and wait for a few minutes before attempting to print anything else.
Try printing now.
After following these steps, my printer finally stopped telling me it was paused and resumed printing like normal .
It’s worth noting that this procedure will not wipe the firmware of your printer. Instead it will simply force it to re-print the text stored in its memory after turning off power to allow for that text to be printed.
Hope this was helpful! If the steps are too difficult for you, it may be worth looking into some other printer.
The above shows that there are many different ways which have been discovered up till now on how to solve this problem of pausing printers so if anyone finds any ‘new’ way of doing it.
Conclusion:
The printer now works. So, to conclude I would say that after a lot of research and tinkering around the correct steps were: Hold down buttons 4 then 1 then 2 then *6+3* Release all buttons Plug in power cord Wait for a few minutes Press button 3 Release button 3 Print! And this worked for me and the Canon MX300.
I hope this helps anyone else who is stuck with a printer that has been paused. Thanks for reading! 🙂 The only thing I can recommend now is to install some scripts which automatically execute your daily jobs, so you don’t have to remember about unpausing each time. There are several scripts created.
