C80 horizontal banding & other weird issues

["Kathleen Wattle" <captivespirit@mindspring.com>]

OK, now about my C80: why the heck is it intermittently giving me horizontal
banding?
I just printed a half dozen small images (4"x 3") in halftone for use in a
small newsletter. I had 2 problems:

First, sometimes after I sent the job, it began printing but disrupted at
about the 1/3 finished point, leaving a faded bit at the end of the print
and the Epson print monitor came up and told me the job failed.

Second, for some successful prints (meaning they printed fully), the print
was quite banded.

Could either problem be because the black cart is low (below 25% full) even
though I've nozzle checked, done cleanings, and polled the Epson utility
only to find "you have enough ink to print 100 more pages like you just
printed"? I did find that sometimes I could get a decent print if I turned
the printer off, unplugged the USB and then reconnected/powered up after I
did a cleaning (if the nozzle check showed it was needed). I also did an
alignment and only moved one of the settings (of 4) by only 1 number after
much scrutiny under loupe of the patterns printed so it is basically still
very close to the factory settings for alignment.

This printer has also given me a LOT of extra blank sheets fed through one
at a time (not as a "clump" as from static stuck paper) after it prints a
job successfully at times. Other times it prints perfectly with no
additional sheets fed through. The only thing that I can see that might have
some affect on this is the Epson Print Monitor. I use XP and when I click
that icon on the task bar (right side) to open the monitor, many times there
are documents pending even when I have sent nothing to printer. Of course I
open the printer and cancel all docs but this occurs frequently. In fact I
just checked and there are 431 docs pending! What the heck is going on? And
more importantly what can I do to resolve this weird stuff?

Thanks for any advice.

Kathleen Wattle
Captive Spirit Photography
        "Capturing the essence . . .
          for Business or Pleasure"
www.captivespirit.com

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