Printer Support Code B200

[Sourn Rose]

PrinterMX882 which had been working fine for a few years. Then bad printer head error appeared. Tried cleaning, flushing with no avail. Ordered a new print head. Installed and promply got an B200 error, which I have been trying to solve with solutions on the net with no results. Its been a good printer and really don't want to buy another, but... Not sure if it will be a Canon after reading about all the Canon printers having an B200 error that hard to solve. I opened the lid, watched the print head get to half way and close the lid. The printer went to the opening page, tried to print and the error popped up. Also put all new printer containerd in the print head.

Update. Tried the the solutions for the B200 error that I was getting with the new printhead with no luck. Finally took the old one and flush it out under hot water and scrubbed the contacts with a cleaning cloth. Let it set a while, then installed it and turned the printer on. Success. Printer startup without the wrong printhead message and I was able to print again. Looks like the new printhead is defective. Not sure how long printing will be abvailable. Will posted anything new.

Its discouraging when a new part doesn't fix. The videos availble for flushing and maintenance are pretty good, but as you are slowly finding, you may not be able to beat this one as the issue may have another underlying cause.

B200 error code is a result of print heads not being cleaned due to under or over use of printer. SOLUTION: Unplug printer as suggested. Open panels to reveal ink cartridges. Remove ink cartridges and slide top retaining bracket to the left to reveal ink wells. Use rubbing alcohol and plenty of Q-Tips to clean ink wells & printer cartridges. Let sit for 2 hours or longer so all alcohol dries. Put ink cartridges back in place and turn on machine.

Canon Error B200 generally relates to a printhead issue and an error message of support code B200 will flash on the control panel. Check this video as well as this one for possible solution. There are plenty more out there that will address the issue Last one is a bit funky but it gives a possible solution

If you've had a Pixma Pro printer for any length of time, you've probably experienced, or at least heard of, the B200 error problem. When this occurs, you can't print until you resolve the problem. There are different theories as to what causes the error; letting the printer sit idle too long is the most popular, but I've also run across unstable power supplies being reported as a cause. I don't recall the other theories, but I have another theory that I have not seen documented elsewhere.

First, let's understand that the B200 is Canon's catch-all error code. If it's not one of the dozen or so specific errors that have their own codes, it gets dropped into the B200 bucket. That means that ALL of the theories may be correct. Canon, tellingly, do not offer an explanation for this, other than "well, that's what happens when you use cheap ink." But, I've had it happen with their ink, too, so...

I've recently had it happen to my original Pro-100 again, and when the usual tricks didn't solve the problem, I took an unusual approach. I found someone selling a brand new Pro-100 without the ink cartridges, but with a factory-sealed, shiny new print head, for less than half of what a print head costs through normal channels. So, I bought it. Brought it home, set it up, put my old ink cartridges into the new print head, turned it on, and got the B200 error.

To me, that eliminated any possibility that the print head was clogged with dry ink or that it had been frazzled by unstable power over time. What's left? The ink cartridges. Canon support will always suggest a new set of cartridges but, at $125 per set, that's not my favorite answer. They will also tell you that the B200 requires bringing the printer to a support center, but the nearest such center is in another state, 289 miles from where I live. I don't live in the middle of nowhere. I live in the 5th largest metropolitan area in the US. They have authorized centers in towns the size of my school district, but not one within reach of the 5 million people here.

Options? I could order a new $125 set of Canon-brand cartridges. I could order a $30 set of off-brand cartridges. I could also, being a refiller, order empty cartridges and refill them from my stock of ink. And that's what led me to the possible solution I want to share; resetting the chips in the ink cartridges.

If you've ever inserted one of these cartridges, you know they have computer chips on one end. This is how the printer can tell you when it's running low on a particular color of ink. And, usually, when it does so, you open up the printer, wait half a year (subjectively) for the print head to appear, and see which one(s) is/are blinking. In my case, I'd already seen the print head several times, and I knew that none of my cartridges were blinking. The printer had also not told me that any were low on ink. But they were.

In fact, my yellow cartridge was almost dry, and should have been blinking, but it wasn't. Clearly a classic case of what we in the IT industry refer to as a machine that's confused. That's not supposed to be possible, but it happens. So, I refilled all my cartridges (always do all of them at the same time), re-set the chips, re-installed them, and watched as the printer figured out that "Oh, there isn't really a problem, after all." No more blinking alarm light flashing the dreaded B200 signal. Problem solved.

Those of you who do not refill your cartridges are not going to have the chip resetter sitting around, because Canon doesn't provide them. They don't even want you to know they exist. But they do, and they are absolutely necessary if you're going to refill your cartridges (and you don't want to risk destroying the printer), so the people who sell bulk ink make them available. Resetting the chips "makes them aware" that they are now full again, so they will report their status correctly to the computer.

The resetter is not cheap. The one from costs $48.99, all by itself. But, you can also get it as part of a complete refill kit for $88.98, which includes enough ink to refill each color cartridge many times.

DO NOT PRINT AFTER RESETTING YOUR CARTRIDGES WITHOUT REFILLING THEM! If you do so, they will report that they're full when they're not and you run the risk of running them dry, which Canon says can damage the printer. However, it could be a useful diagnostic test, to determine if it's the cartridges causing the error. If resetting them makes the error go away, then you need to decide whether to refill them (and reset them, again), or buy new ones.

Followup - While I was typing up that whole saga, I was also running various cleaning utilities over and over. I think I ended up using 5 of the 12 or so available, some of them many times. Despite all that, the yellow output was barely visible in the nozzle check printouts. So, I removed the yellow cartridge and took it to the kitchen sink, where I ran water over the round output nozzle until it ran clear.

My thinking was that the dried ink must have been clogging the cartridge, rather than the print head, because the print head was brand new. I've seen dozens of posts telling people to soak or otherwise clean their print heads, but I've not seen anyone recommend cleaning the cartridges. I don't know if washing the cartridges will cure the B200, but it might. If the print head senses that it's not getting ink from one or more cartridges, that could trigger the error. So, if you're going to clean the print head, anyway, why not clean the cartridges, too?

Washing my yellow cartridge didn't solve the problem immediately. I had to run the Deep Cleaning utility a few more times after drying and reinserting the cartridge but, eventually, it began to print correctly. So, if you're getting spotty/inconsistent output from the test utilities, I'd try this first before you replace the print head.

I wish it wasn't so much work to drag the old printer out and set it up, because I'd love to know if putting the reset and cleaned cartridges back in it would result in the printer working, again. I'd put the odds at around 70:30 in favor of it working.

While I appreciate your sharing of potential solutions to a problem, I think it's also useful to not make issues bigger than they might be. Nobody is helped by blowing up these stories. There is no data that the majority of Pixma Pro users run into this, nor reason to assume they do. Maybe there is plenty discussion to be found on the internet, but that's by no means any proof about an issue being common. After all, people don't usually post to tell a device works without issue.

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