How-To Geek

I bought a new printer and it was working fine, then it just went through the motions, but there was no ink on the paper. I hooked up another printer that was working fine before it put it away, I put in a new ink cartridge, and it did the same thing, no ink on the paper. I called Canon, they remotely accessed my computer and told me that the printer drivers were not working and that I had a virus.

I don't understand how I can have a virus when I have Norton Antivirus free from Comcast; SpeedMaxPC; CCleaner and SuperAntiSpyware that I run very often. And they all say everything is fine.

Canon wanted $100 to $139 to fix the virus problem and Norton wanted over $100 without even looking to see if I really had that problem or not. I've been ripped off so many times, I don't believe any of them anymore.

After the two printer problems, I noticed that my Jing capture thing is gone and when I tried to unload my camera, that would not work either. As far as I can tell, everything else works.

Do you have any ideas what I can do? Thanks. Pat

After you run the Malwarebytes you might want to uninstall your printer software.
Go into device mgr and make sure your printers are not showing. If they are then uninstall them. Unplug your printer. Reboot then plug your printer and reinstall only one of your printer.

The easiest way would be reinstalling the OS, but that would take a lot of time and you will lose all your files.

OK, I did the Malwarebytes scan. It didn't find a thing wrong. I removed both printers completely, and then hooked them up again separately. One started working again. The other one with the new color ink cartridge worked except the ink did not work, so I think the new ink is actually empty. Is that possible???

I also got Jing back and my camera worked. So the only thing wrong now is that the ink shows up empty and will not print. The black cartridge was already empty I know for sure, but it actually printed out very faded, but visible, so that new color cartridge is absolutely empty.

Now my questions is, Malwarebytes showed that nothing was wrong, so why is everything working now except for the empty ink? This stuff drives me nuts!

Canon wanted to charge you that much? Are you 100% certain you had Canon themselves on the phone? If it was some kind of bug that is holding your printer hostage, its probably scamware.

I did have a funny feeling that I didn't really have Canon on the phone. I didn't know they could hijack my phone, too. Damn! You can't trust anybody. Are you guys sure YOU are real! :) Just kidding.

Also, I think some of my problems did get fixed by removing and then reinstalling them. BUT, the biggest surprise of all is this: I figured out that I installed the OLD empty ink cartridge instead of the NEW one! Can you believe that??? What an idiot I am. Next time something like this happens, I am going to check the simplest, most obvious possibilities first.

Thank you again, so much. Pat

Thank you, warlock. Just for everyone's information, I called Canon and told them what happened. The lady I spoke to told me that they have had many calls about this. She assured me that Canon does not charge for anything and they do not remotely access computers. She said they cannot stop anyone from advertising online that they can do this.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember exactly how I reached the crook I talked to who tried to rip me off. I thought I was contacting www.canonusa.com and got a phone number from there. The guy who answered the phone had an east indian accent. He showed me all kinds of screens that showed how many things on my computer had "stopped." Not long after I talked to him, I noticed that the Jing capture thing was not working and that I could not get pictures off my camera.

This experience reminded me of a recent very similar problem I had with what I thought was a Microsoft person. I got a funny feeling about that guy, too. Actually, there were two of them that I spoke with. They told me that I had a virus, too, and wanted about $300, but kept going down in price. I just knew something was fishy. I never thought I would thank God that I didn't have any money. I told you guys about that and you knew who those guys were. I never thought I'd get caught in that kind of trap again. Boy, they're slick, aren't they?

What a cesspool of evil we live in! Thank you all again for all the help you have given me. I tell everyone about you. You are angels. Pat

I'd love to see that e-book. How can I get it?