Did recent Win10 upgrade render my refillable carts no longer compatible?

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
1

A couple of days ago I got a msg from MSoft that I was due for a large upgrade. It certainly was large, took close to 1/2 hour. A while back there were warnings in the ink refill community to beware of Win 10 upgrades, that printer drivers would be upgraded whether you wanted them or not. These driver upgrades would render third party refillable cartridges no longer accepting refills. The user would be forced to use only Epson OEM carts.

When I went to my printer, an Epson 1430, to do a routine nozzle check, I noticed the opening page no longer showed “check ink levels” and “perform nozzle check”. I was able to get to these tasks by a bit of a roundabout way, no problem. I began to worry, but not so much about this minor inconvenience. This nuisance raised a red flag, it may be the tip of the iceberg, maybe I could no longer refill my carts. (Clearly, the printer is working now… the carts just may no longer be refillable.) These carts are from InkJet Mall, and IJM takes good care of their products. Their carts may be immune to compatibility problems. Also, I’ve heard these automatic driver upgrades only effect more recent printers.

It might help readers to give details… the version number of my upgrade is 1703 and the build number is 15063.540

TIA,

Paul

2

It’s my understanding that it’s updates to the printer firmware that you need to be wary of, rather than printer drivers. A few years back there was a MacOS / OS X update that offered to keep your printer firmware up-to-date, and that one rendered the printer unable to recognise third party carts. I don’t recall a similar occurrence on Windows, so far, although you could be at risk if you opted to manually update the printer firmware yourself. If your printer is still accepting the IJM carts then you’re alright. If there had been a lockout you’d see it on the printer - red lights for all the carts.

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Thanks, Brian,

I agree … it’s the firmware. But (and perhaps I should’ve been more clear) that the printer driver updates that caused some concern a few years ago included updating the firmware as well. If it was simply the driver, we could live with that by just uninstalling it and reverting to an earlier less harmful version - if still available.

Like I say, it was the change in the opening page of the printer driver that was a red flag for me. But your last sentence is what I hope for.

Regards,

Paul