Last time used my printer it was reporting the colour toners as being low (about 12% ish). Today it's claiming that they're totally empty and refusing to print black even though that's still at 16%.

Clearly it's a lying piece of shit. I've seen a few bits of software around that claim to reset the counters to 100%,but they all seem to want money. Anyone know of a free utility for this? Or if the paid ones even work?

It's a Samsung clp-360w laser jobbie.

When I used to refill my brother b+w laser toner cartridges with a noxious black powder, before that ruined a drum which the replacement costs more than just buying a whole new printer with a drum (which I did), there was a physical thingy to switch/tape over on the cartridge so the printer would be fooled into thinking it was new. So you may not need software?

The toner cartridges have a chip on them these days, probably just a unique serial number. Either need to change the serial. Number (probably impossible) or change the firmware on the printer to reset the on board counter for that serial number.

Wonder if this would work...

http://hackaday.com/2012/03/05/resetting-the-page-count-on-a-laser-printer/

I'm not too fussed about refilling the toner, but being allowed to use what's left would be quite nice.

It's a bugger they've got to this level. On our printer, fooling the "toner-out" system was a simple case of colouring in the toner window with a black marker pen.

Did that 9 months ago and must have printed over 300 sheets since, toner still going strong. You're quite right, laser printer manufacturers are a bunch of lying, dishonest fucks :(

They caught on to the inkjet cartridge game.

I just ignore the warnings and carry on printing until printing no longer workee

On our cheapie Brother we wait until prints have streaks through them.

Yup. Tried putting electrical tape over the sensors, but it just claims no cartridges installed.

Strangley, I have two print drivers installed: one is the one I added which comes up under the name I gave the printer. The other windows automatically added when it saw the printer on the network, under the printers default class name. If I print to kosPrinter, it refuses to work and claims it's out of toner. If I print to Samsung CLP Class Printer, it works fine.

So it's purely a driver restriction. Total bullshit.

I usually go for the shake the toner until I either cover myself in toner or the prints get bandy method

The dust is toxic.

Or possibly not.

Exactly what I'd like to do in an ideal world. It annoys me intensely when they just artificially stop printing - even though you know there's loads of toner left in reality

At my previous job, we had a colour printer that "ran out" of toner after the allotted 3,500 pages were printed. After enabling the convoluted and very-well-hidden override, it printed another 1,900 pages before the pages became patchy. Absolutely ridiculous!

Partly at least. The Web interface to the printer also shows the toner as empty, remains to be seen if the actual printer will refuse to print soon.

Try some for breakfast and get back to us.

I really don't think it would be as nice as what I usually have for breakfast, TBH