I just received a message on my PictureMate 300 that parts inside printer are at end of life. I am to contact Epson Support for further...

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Dorothy,

In essence this means your printer believes it has printed a sufficient amount of pages for the foamy ink pads inside the bottom of machine to have become saturated with ink. As such you are at risk of ink spilling over and damaging both your printer and the surrounding area. Epson don't really consider their machines serviceable and recommend you take them to a dedicated Epson service centre to have the counter reset and have the parts replaced. If you have the money or sufficient reason to hang onto the printer this is certainly the best course of action. However as many customer have pointed out to us over the years the cost of such a service is quite often more expensive than the purchase of another printer. If you find yourself in a situation where this applies and you either can't afford to get it services or have had sufficient use from the machine where you are ready to demote it to more mundane tasks and purchase a new printer I would like to suggest the following action to you to resolve the issue.

Firstly head over to:
http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml

Once there, you can download a free piece of software that allows the resetting of the page counter allowing you to keep on printing. Whilst the software is not compatible with all Epson printers a large number of printers are supported so please check to see if you can use this free download with your model of printer. If not please don't give up as many other people have developed similar software for the very same purpose, we advise popping onto eBay and searching for some software that will work for you. Assuming however your printer is listed take a moment to look over the user agreement and hit download. Even though the site lists no operating systems released later than XP I am happy to confirm I have been using this software with Windows 7 without issue. Once downloaded the installation takes seconds and will launch automatically. The first port of call is to go to the "Configuration" tab and select your specific model from the drop down box. Then hit the X in the top right to reduce the software to your system tray. This done right click the SSC icon (a printer surrounded by cyan, magenta and yellow) and go to "Protection Counter" before clicking "Reset Protection Counter" when it appears. You will then get a dialogue box asking you if the ink pads have been replaced. It is important to realise that resetting the counter won't really resolve anything and you will still have a certain amount of ink in these pads and some action should be taken. From here you have two choices...

1. Use the search engine of your choice to locate instructions on how to replace/clean the pads yourself (Recommended)
2. Open up the printer and locate the exposed parts of the sponge. Then get a few sheets of kitchen towel or any other absorbent, non-fibrous tissue and dab back and forth on the pad until no more ink gets absorbed.

If you have chosen to clean rather than replace the pads we strongly advise keeping an eye upon the pads to ensure ink isn't spilling out into the printer to avoid unnecessary damage to your printer and possessions. With this done please indicate to the software the pads have been changed and you should get confirmation the counter has been reset.

take care,
Bill

Phone Support
* called customer.
* not avail.
* left vm.

Chat Support:
* customer states she will purchase new printer.
* She can try to clean the heads and reset ink counter.

Problem resolved.