The problem gets worse if the AID is not working properly - then the printer will start cleaning until you get an error message - after quite a long time and some ink lost. Finally the Epson tech repair guys came and the whole pump-cap-assy system had to be replaced - and now things are working fine! I might even dare switiching the AID on
Unfortunately the AID circuitry itself is notoriously unreliable, and detects faults when there are none. Best bet is to hope the nozzle clogging stays good. They replaced my pump/cap assembly in February, and it worked great for a couple of months, then clogging became worse than ever.
Only this week, a manual nozzle test pattern revealed that almost all yellow and light grey nozzles were blocked on my 7900. This is the worst nozzle blocking I have had so far. I ran a manual clean for just these colours but my AID kicked in and after 20 minutes I had that dreaded error message. I selected cancel and performed a manual nozzle test pattern and not surprisingly it was perfect. I have the latest firmware and the auto nozzle check is turned off in the menus.
I am beginning to think that my 7900 is punishing me because it feels spurned.
(I am now doing about 95% of my printing on my Z3200 which just gets on with the job.)
So perhaps I will buy my 7900 some nice flowers to cheer it up a bit.
It might be worth a try as nothing else seems to work.
I'm with you. Were it not for the outstanding print quality I would have given up on this printer. After replacing nearly every piece in this printer 2 or 3 times, Epson finally relented and shipped me a new 7900. I will be setting it up Tuesday.
The Auto Nozzle Check is a fiasco. If the printer didn't clog much like my 11880 it wouldn't matter much, but you cannot disable auto nozzle check except for between prints. If this function is not working properly, you can't turn it off. After every cleaning choice you make the printer will do a nozzle check, so if your AID system is not working, each cleaning cycle you do will result in multiple cleanings.
You
cannot control the cleaning of nozzles manually by printing nozzle patterns and using manual cleaning choices. I have tried to find out if the service cleaning options use a nozzle check, but cannot confirm whether they do or do not.
Since the AID circuitry seems to be useless (I would guess the majority of us have disabled it, I have it disabled on my 11880 as well.) it seems a firmware update should be offered to all users adding another option, that of completely disabling the printer from performing any nozzle checks.
What would be better is making this feature work as advertised .... if it were reliable it would be a great feature.