Epson 9900 prints horizontal line

[alejandra.v]

For a couple of months now, we have been getting strange horizontal lines when printing on a 4 year old Epson 9900, for no apparent reason. They are always located about 1cm (0.4inch) from the top of the image, where it stars to print.
Nozzle check comes out clean, but we have been getting problems with both the Yellow and Cyan, though we only print if nozzle check is 100% ok. All our drivers are up to date. We print from Lightroom 5, Print Sharpening Low, Relative, 240-150ppi.

We actually noticed there are two types of lines, sometimes they're black/striped, sometimes they're just a discoloration from the original photo. So, it might be two different problems.

First Suspect:
Discoloration Line

Nozzle check is fine
720 and/or 1440dpi
Epson Luster, Semimatte, Hot Press, it appears in all types of paper

It appears across the photo, within the first cm of printed image, it's 2mm thick. The rest of the image comes out perfectly.
It occurs very frequently, almost 1 every 5 prints.
Could it be due to an old Nozzle?
--

Second Suspect:
Black/Striped Line

Nozzle check is fine
720 and/or 1440dpi
Epson Luster, Semimatte, Hot Press, it appears in all types of paper, (just like the other type of line).

It appears across the photo, within the first 3cm of printed image, it's 4mm thick. The rest of the image comes out perfectly.
It has stripes, so it´s not just black, it comes as a misread of the original photo.
It appears very rarely, 1 every 50 prints or so.
Could this be due to a Network issue? Miscommunication between the computer and Printer?
--

I'm attaching some sample photos of both types of issues.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Paul2660]

That looks like a corrupted driver or spooling of a job.  It doesn't look like a head issue. 

You might try re-loading the print driver?  not sure if what the OS is.  LR 5.4 is my main print engine and I am using win7 64 bit.  I have only seen this type of issue when the driver has somehow gotten corrupted or the spooler is causing problems. 

Since you are getting good nozzle checks, the only other thing to consider is doing the head alignment again, from the user menu, but this really looks like a bit of a print job jumble due to something getting corrupted in the print stream.

Paul

[Andres Toodo]

as i remember it was a software issue. Line appeared about 1 cm from top while printed from LR. Same file printed perfectly from Photoshop.

[alejandra.v]

Thank you Paul! Our OS is Lion 10.7, we're checking the head alignment now, and will try reinstalling all drivers.

Thank you Andres! We're also going to test print from Photoshop, and probably update to LR 5.4, though we're really hoping this isn't a LR issue, because we really love using it instead of PS.

[Paul2660]

The more I look at the samples, the more it looks like a corrupted driver/or spooler or both.

I say spooler, I am from a windows background, I don't know if Mac spools or not like windows does.

Paul

[Wayne Fox]

This does look like corrupted data, not a printer problem ...

I’ve seen weird issues like this when printing very large prints at either too high of DPI (720) or at 16bit with lower resolution (360) from Lightroom

[RobinFaichney]

I had something like this on a Mac a while back, I found instructions somewhere to remove all Epson software then downloaded and reinstalled the latest driver and haven't seen it again.

[Wayne Fox]

I had something like this on a Mac a while back, I found instructions somewhere to remove all Epson software then downloaded and reinstalled the latest driver and haven't seen it again.

Here’s my recommended process, note that the Epson Uninstall Center is now Epson Uninstaller (current version is here)

Part of my process also includes resetting the mac printing system, not just uninstalling the drivers.  Sometimes this isn’t necessary, and downside is you lose all your custom paper sizes and presets (although with lightroom I never use the macs presets anymore anyway, since these are saved in the LR preset, as long as you leave the OS dialog box set to default and not choose a custom preset in that dialog box).

[alifatemi]

Welcome to the club! My advice is to contact epson asap if they can ever help you!

[alejandra.v]

We tried sending the file from Photoshop CS6 but we got the same issue, I must says we were strangely glad that we got that result, because we really really love Lightroom. We also checked the head alignment and it is perfect. We're almost sure it's a corrupted driver, as we've been advised here. Though we haven't been able to reinstall anything yet (we will certainly follow Wayne's instructions) because we had several large prints due this week. So, we're trying this either tomorrow or on Saturday, hopefully.
I'll post a message as soon as we try this, and let you know how it works out!
Thank you all for your replies!

[alejandra.v]

By the way, the Discoloration Lines are appearing in almost every print, so our way to work around it and keep up with the work was to add 1cm of white in PS and then import it to LR, it's been working fine like that, but this is only a temporary fix, we definitely can't waste 1cm of 44in paper every time!

[Doombrain]

have you tried another computer?

[alejandra.v]

Sorry it took so long to reply, but we've been printing non-stop ever since. Yes, we tried using a different computer and the same discoloration has been appearing, although it has been appearing less frequently, we do also send files with an extra white cm whenever we can.
The other computer is a Mac OS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, LR 3.
We have been postponing reinstalling all the drivers because the last time we did there were some problems in regards to the color calibration, we had to spend an extra couple of days recalibrating.
So, my new question is: if both computers are producing the same printing problem, they're on different LR and OS, what could it be?

[alifatemi]

Sorry it took so long to reply, but we've been printing non-stop ever since. Yes, we tried using a different computer and the same discoloration has been appearing, although it has been appearing less frequently, we do also send files with an extra white cm whenever we can.
The other computer is a Mac OS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, LR 3.
We have been postponing reinstalling all the drivers because the last time we did there were some problems in regards to the color calibration, we had to spend an extra couple of days recalibrating.
So, my new question is: if both computers are producing the same printing problem, they're on different LR and OS, what could it be?

Ask Epson to check main board of the printer.