I’ve been using an HP Officejet 7720 wide-format printer for a couple of years now. It’s a pretty good printer, off course it gets stuck from time to time, but it works well enough. I’ve been using 123inkt cartridges. Not because they are better, but but because you can easily buy three 123inkt cartridges for 1 HP cartridge.
I’ve seen adverts mentioning that if you use HP Instant-ink you get an automatic firmware upgrade that will block non-HP cartridges. I can understand that from the HP point of view since you’re subscribing to their inkt-as-a-service plan, you need to use those cartridges.
I’ve also been looking into instant-ink for my printer, but i found it wasn’t supported. However i found that HP is also blocking printers that are not compatible with instant-ink, with the “excuse” that they can not guarantee quality.
Nice excuse, but my printer is out of warranty so quality is hardly your concern as you won’t help me with any issues anyways. Also the Dutch legal system has proclaimed that HP is allowed to do this.
Today i installed a new 123Inkt cartridge and my HP printer just blocked. Non-HP cartridge, so no go.
It didn’t even matter that there where already some non-HP cartridges installed, it just froze.
Searching the HP support forum, you find messages everywhere stating “Firmware downgrade is not possible”.
Well, let me tell you, IT IS POSSIBLE.
So, step 1. disable internet access for your printer, but make sure you can still access it over your local network.
Step 2. Download this printer firmware for the HP Officejet 7720 series.
Step 3. Remove the blocking cartridge and re-insert the previous cartridge (this is import, it wont work if you don’t do this! If you lost the previous cartridge, you’re gonna need an original HP cartridge).
Step 4. Go to the printer website and do a factory reset (not a network reset, a factory reset!)
Step 5. Wait until the printer is back online, now start the downloaded executable
Step 6. The software should detect the printer, if the status is “Ready”, begin the installation.
Step 7. Reconfigure the printer from the display, make sure you DISABLE UPDATES
Step 8. enable internet access for your printer if needed.