Have Canon blocked refilling of ip1800 cartidges?

[harrogate22]

Hi

Yesterday I boaght a Canon PIXMA IP1800. New cartridges were, I noticed, very expensive, though I presumed that I would be able to get cheap refills for the PG-40 and CL-41. I also thought that I might be able to refill them myself. On the way home I called in at the local CARTRIDGE WORLD, and they informed me that Canon have introduced some form of software block to stop the use of refills. They said that this software block is somehow built into the Windows updates (?), and that it works on a "print-count" basis, so if a given cartridge starts to print more copies than it should (for a legitimate Canon cartridge), then it would prohibit further printing until a genuine cartridge is fitted. Is there any truth in this, and is there any for of patch or work-around?

Thanks,

Ken

 

[tigerwan]

"then it would prohibit further printing until a genuine cartridge is fitted"

Well, the cartridge is a genuine Canon cartridge, just refilled, and re-inserted. I have heard of a program included with the driver software that can cause problems with recycling your Canon cartridges. (By the way, if Canon stopped you from recycling/refilling your cartridge in Canada, they'd be in huge crap) Anyways this software included on the installation disc is the "Canon Extended Survey Program" or something similar. Make sure you remove this software from your system. You may have to start with a new cartridge again, being Canon has disabled that one, but the new one should work for refilling as long as the "survey prog." is not there. Another thing, DO NOT run the cartridge empty, this burns it out quickly, the heads on these cartridges are very very fragile .