After several weeks of no working printer, I finally sucked it up and decided it was time to fix it. The error message “Ink System Failure” had me thinking that I’d installed a faulty ink cartridge. (I have them refilled at the awesome Inkwell Xpress in downtown Portland, where Good Dog Bad Dog used to live.)
So I finally went out and bought brand new ink cartridges, to rule out the ink-replacements as a problem. And still, no matter what I did, I kept getting the nasty Error: 0xc18a0001. HP’s support site instructed me to remove all the cartridges, turn off the printer and unplug it for 2 minutes. Then plug it in, power it up and voila! it would magically work. Only it didn’t. Then it instructed me to take it in for servicing.
Servicing? Apparently what they meant to say was “scour the web for tips from other people who have suffered from the same problem. We know about the issue and how to fix but we don’t have to care about you.”
The biggest obstacle was wading through the heaps and heaps of irrelevant posts, sketchy solutions and various rants and raves. But an hour or so later, I found it. The solution that worked. Sweet Jesus!
ANSWER (to most of life’s questions): hard reset
HP C5180 All-In-One Printer HARD RESET:
- Hold down HELP + OK button and unplug printer (could experiment with regular power-off, but I opted for brute force)
- Hold down HELP + OK button again as you plug the printer back in. Then power it on, if it doesn’t power on automatically. Be Safe: keep holding the buttons until the printer turns itself off. (It took mine less than a minute.)
- Now you can release the buttons and simply power it back on. (I held my breath, but that’s not required.)
- I got an error message about “improper shut down” since I unplugged it w/out powering down. After I clicked “OK” the printer was just fine and didn’t mind anymore. And now I can print.
You are an absolute genius! Thank you very much. I had exactely the same experience. You made my day!
Thank you so much – This has fixed the problem.
I was ready to go buy a new printer because everything else I tried failed. Thank you so much for the info!
No luck for me. After initially disappearing, allowing a few prints, the same error returned.
Excellent advice, worked on my c6180 too
Thanks!!
You say in step 2 hold the Help + OK buttons until the printer powers ON. But then you say, “Be Safe: keep holding the buttons until the printer turns itself OFF. (It took mine less than a minute.) Is it on or off?
Thanks and best regards.
Hi,
It seems like the printer here (C5180) has an ink cartridge serial counter too. So, if you have a genuine and working cartridge, but you take it off and put it back several times, the printer will finally stop accepting it. I suppose, they assume at HP, that if same cartridge is taken off and put back, it might be refilled meanwhile and it should be rejected.
Fortunately there is a battery powered memory for these serials, and it can be erased by taking the battery away for a while. Battery is attached to the circuit board at right side of the printer.
So far mine is working and I only had to invest in new print cartriges, not sure I had to but they werre not OME so went and got them.
On the HP C5180 you can access a special “Underware” menu by
1. left arrow + OK to get to “Enter Special Key Combo” page
2. left arrow, OK, right arrow to get to “Underware” menu
If you then use arrow keys to navigate to “boot code” you can activate Mfg Mode.
If you then turn off and on the printer, it boots up in Mfg Mode and seems to bypass errors and prints as it should, though some things may not work. Playing around with the menus, and then resetting it to user mode and rebooting the printer, it seemed to ignore ink status, showing all ink cartridges with yellow exclamation mark, and printed properly!!!
if anyone has the missing button presses in the post from mike please email them to me at adamlsalter <at> gmail.com
thanks!!!
Here’s one more person who puts you in the “genius” column. I have the Photosmart C5140. I tried the worthless instructions on the hp site. I also was ready to purchase a new printer (definitely not another HP). Followed your instructions and it works perfectly. A million thanks.
@c5180 – I’ve updated mike’s comment to include the button combos. the HTML filter had accidentally wiped it out.
Awesome! I can print now. the small grandkids got button pushing happy on it and I now suspect from Harri’s post they released and snapped in the ink cartridges (maybe many times. Thanks for the great help!
now all I have is a rainbow effect on my printer screen
For anyone interested, I had this problem AAAGES ago, and did the usual resets, which worked for a limited time. After I began playing around with the menus and discovered the combo in my previous post that gets you into MFG Mode.
Turning it off can give you the rainbow effect or black screen with white lines criss crossing effect, just press the power button and it should get back into MFG mode.
To go back to user mode just follow the steps to get into mfg mode again and choose user mode instead.
Lots of things don´t work in MFG mode, most importantly, it doesn’t reload the print heads with ink, so when printing becomes faint, you should put it back into user mode, do a system reset, as described in so many other places, wait for it to load some ink. Chances are you’ll get ink system failure again though so once the ink loads, get the printer back into mfg mode.
Its a lot of hassle, but the alternative was throwing it away!
8 months on, I was in user mode again to refill the print heads, only this time, when it finished, it didn’t give me the error, I am now happily printing in user mode again, as it should be, everything working just fine. Just thought I’d share.
I would also point people to http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Other-printing-questions/Photosmart-C5180-Power-Up-Power-Down-Problem-Loops-on-off-on-off/td-p/132152/page/4 where it describes the process for changing a couple of capaciters from the mainboard which apparently tend to fail, or bulge as the learned people say.
was having an issue with the printer looping and staying in the HP screen. After reading several suggestions and nothing workng, I decided to try pulling off the side panel on the far righ of the display. My problem was nothing more than,an unplugged ribbon cable. The 2nd one from the far back. Easy access. Hope this helps.
Thank you so much for this information. I
tried all of the other suggestions and none
of them worked. My printer is working fine
now after using your suggestion.
Thanks for Your Help, I knew Some like this will work. IM ALSO A tECH FOR Cell Phones and most of technical issues are solve with HARD RESET’s or SOFT RESET (With Combination of Keys on the Phone).
“I SEARCH FOR C5180 RESET ” THANKSSSSSSSS
THANK YOU! HP support was a JOKE! This fixed my printer!
I just about to give up with my printer but then I tried this and it worked! I was really pleased but after the first print, the same error message appeared again. I did the hard reset once more and it printed fine, but after that the error message reappears!!! It’s driving me mad – Any ideas on how to permanently solve this problem would be really appreciated. Does anyone have an answer ???
Thanks a lot. Your “OK+Help”-button-procedure did the deal on my Photosmart 5180. It’s doing a NVM Reset.
I had the nasty “Error Oxc18a0206″. Even after replacing all ink cartridges and I was fed up in wasting the money for the new cartriges.
Now everything is working perfect again.