C Troubleshooting and routine maintenance

Troubleshooting

If you think there is a problem with your machine, check the chart below and follow the troubleshooting tips.
Most problems can be easily resolved by yourself. If you need additional help, the Brother Solutions Center offers the latest FAQs and troubleshooting tips. Visit us at http://solutions.brother.com.

If you are having difficulty with your machine

If you think there is a problem with the way your faxes look, make a copy first. If the copy looks good, the problem may not be your machine. Check the chart below and follow the troubleshooting tips.
Printing or receiving faxes
Difficulties
Suggestions
Condensed print
Horizontal streaks
Top and bottom sentences are cut off
Missing lines
Usually this is caused by a poor telephone connection. If your copy looks good, you probably had a bad connection, with static or interference on the telephone line. Ask the other party to send the fax again.
Poor print quality
Vertical black lines when receiving
The corona wire for printing may be dirty. Clean the corona wire. (See Cleaning the corona wire.)
The sender’s scanner may be dirty. Ask the sender to make a copy to see if the problem is with the sending machine. Try receiving from another fax machine.
If the problem continues, call your dealer for service.
Received faxes appear as split or blank pages.
If the received faxes are divided and printed on two pages or if you get an extra blank page, your paper size setting may not be correct for the paper you are using. (See Paper Size.)
Turn on Auto Reduction. (See Printing a reduced incoming fax.)
Telephone line or connections
Difficulties
Suggestions
Dialling does not work.
Check for a dial tone.
Change Tone/Pulse setting. (See the Quick Setup Guide.)
Check all line cord connections.
Check that the machine is plugged in and switched on.
Send a manual fax by pressing Hook or by lifting the handset of the external telephone and dialling the number. Wait to hear the fax receiving tones before pressing Start.
The machine does not answer when called.
Make sure the machine is in the correct receive mode for your setup. (See Receiving a fax.) Check for a dial tone. If possible, call your machine to hear it answer. If there is still no answer, check the telephone line cord connection. If you do not hear ringing when you call your machine, ask your telephone company to check the line.
Sending faxes
Difficulties
Suggestions
Poor sending quality.
Try changing your resolution to Fine or S.Fine. Make a copy to check your machine’s scanner operation. If the copy quality is not good, clean the scanner. (See Cleaning the scanner.)
Transmission Verification Report says ‘RESULT:ERROR’.
There is probably temporary noise or static on the line. Try sending the fax again. If you are sending a PC Fax message and get ‘RESULT:ERROR’ on the Transmission Verification Report, your machine may be out of memory. To free up extra memory, you can turn off fax storage (See Turning off Remote Fax Options), print fax messages in memory (See Printing a fax from the memory) or cancel a delayed fax or polling job (See Checking and cancelling waiting jobs). If the problem continues, ask the telephone company to check your telephone line.
If you often get transmission errors due to possible interference on the telephone line, try changing the Compatibility setting to Basic(for VoIP). (See Telephone line interference.)
Vertical black lines when sending.
Black vertical lines on faxes you send are typically caused by dirt or correction fluid on the glass strip. (See Cleaning the scanner.)
Handling incoming calls
Difficulties
Suggestions
The machine ‘Hears’ a voice as a CNG Tone.
If Fax Detect is set to On, your machine is more sensitive to sounds. It may mistakenly interpret certain voices or music on the line as a fax machine calling and respond with fax receiving tones. Deactivate the machine by pressing Stop/Exit. Try avoiding this problem by turning Fax Detect to Off. (See Fax Detect.)
Sending a Fax Call to the machine.
If you answered on an external or extension telephone, press your Remote Activation Code (default setting is Bsymbol.tone51). When your machine answers, hang up.
Custom features on a single line.
If you have Call Waiting, Call Waiting/Caller ID, Caller ID, Voice Mail, an answering machine, an alarm system or other custom feature on a single telephone line with your machine, it may create a problem sending or receiving faxes.
For Example: If you subscribe to Call Waiting or some other custom service and its signal comes through the line while your machine is sending or receiving a fax, the signal can temporarily interrupt or disrupt the faxes. Brother’s ECM feature should help overcome this problem. This condition is related to the telephone system industry and is common to all devices that send and receive information on a single, shared line with custom features. If avoiding a slight interruption is crucial to your business, a separate line with no custom features is recommended.
Menu access difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
The machine beeps when you try to access the Setup Receive and Setup Send menus.
If Fax Graphic is not illuminated, press it to turn on Fax mode. The Setup Receive setting (Menu, 2, 1) and Setup Send setting (Menu, 2, 2) are available only when the machine is in Fax mode.
Copy difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
Cannot make a copy.
Make sure that Copy Graphic is illuminated. (See Entering copy mode.)
Contact your administrator to check your Secure Function Lock Settings.
Vertical black line appears in copies.
Black vertical lines on copies are typically caused by dirt or correction fluid on the glass strip, or the corona wire for printing is dirty. (See Cleaning the scanner and Cleaning the corona wire.)
Printing difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
No printout.
Check that the machine is plugged in and the power switch is turned on.
Check that the toner cartridge and drum unit are installed correctly. (See Replacing the drum unit.)
Check the interface cable connection on both the machine and your computer. (See the Quick Setup Guide.)
Check that the correct printer driver has been installed and chosen.
Check to see if the LCD is showing an error message. (See Error and maintenance messages.)
Check the machine is online:
(Windows Vista®) Click the Start button, Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, and then Printers. Right-click Brother MFC-XXXX Printer. Make sure that Use Printer Offline is unchecked.
(Windows® XP and Windows Server® 2003) Click the Start button and choose Printers and Faxes. Right-click Brother MFC-XXXX Printer. Make sure that Use Printer Offline is unchecked.
(Windows® 2000) Click the Start button and choose Settings and then Printers. Right-click Brother MFC-XXXX Printer. Make sure that Use Printer Offline is unchecked.
Contact your administrator to check your Secure Function Lock settings.
The machine prints unexpectedly or it prints garbage.
Pull out the paper tray and wait until the machine stops printing. Then turn off the machine and disconnect from the power for several minutes. (The machine can be turned off for up to 60 hours without losing faxes stored in the memory.)
Check the settings in your application to make sure it is set up to work with your machine.
If you are using the parallel port connection, check that the port is BRMFC and not LPT1.
The machine prints the first couple of pages correctly, then some pages have text missing.
Check the settings in your application to make sure that it is set up to work with your machine.
Your computer is not recognising the machine’s input buffer’s full signal. Make sure that you connected the interface cable correctly. (See the Quick Setup Guide.)
The headers or footers appear when the document displays on the screen but they do not show up when it is printed.
There is an unprintable area on the top and bottom of the page. Adjust the top and bottom margins in your document to allow for this.
The machine does not print on both sides of the paper even though the printer driver setting is Duplex.
Check the paper size setting in the printer driver. You need to choose A4 size of paper. (60 to 105 g/m2)
The machine is not printing or has stopped printing and the machine’s status LED is yellow.
Press Job Cancel.
As the machine cancels the Job and clears it from the memory it may produce an incomplete printout.
Scanning difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
TWAIN errors appear while scanning.
Make sure that the Brother TWAIN driver is chosen as the primary source. In Presto! PageManager, click File, Select source, and choose the Brother TWAIN driver.
OCR does not work.
Try increasing the scanning resolution.
Network scanning does not work.
Software difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
Cannot install software or print.
Run the Repair MFL-Pro Suite program on the CD-ROM. This program will repair and reinstall the software.
Cannot perform ‘2 in 1’ or ‘4 in 1’ printing.
Check that the paper size setting in the application and in the printer driver are the same.
The machine does not print from Adobe® Illustrator®.
Try to reduce the print resolution. (See Advanced tab in the Software User’s Guide on the CD-ROM.)
Paper handling difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
The machine does not load paper.
The LCD shows No Paper or a Paper Jam message.
If there is no paper, load a new stack of paper into the paper tray.
If there is paper in the paper tray, make sure it is straight. If the paper is curled, you should straighten it. Sometimes it is helpful to remove the paper, turn the stack over and put it back into the paper tray.
Reduce the amount of paper in the paper tray, and then try again.
Check that the MP tray mode is not chosen in the printer driver.
If the LCD shows Paper Jam message and you still have a problem, see Paper jams.
The machine does not feed paper from the MP tray.
Fan the paper well and put it back in the tray firmly.
Make sure that MP tray mode is chosen in the printer driver.
How do I print on envelopes?
You can load envelopes from the MP tray. Your application must be set up to print the envelope size you are using. This is usually done in the Page Setup or Document Setup menu of your application. (See your application’s manual for more information.)
What paper can I use?
You can use thin paper, plain paper, thick paper, bond paper, recycled paper, envelops, labels and transparencies that are made for laser machines. (For details, see Acceptable paper and other print media.)
There is a paper jam.
(See Paper jams.)
Print quality difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
Printed pages are curled.
Low quality thin or thick paper or not printing on the recommended side of the paper could cause this problem. Try turning over the stack of paper in the paper tray.
Make sure that you choose the Paper Type that suits the print media type you are using. (See Acceptable paper and other print media.)
Printed pages are smeared.
The Paper Type setting may be incorrect for the type of print media you are using, or the print media may be too thick or have a rough surface. (See Acceptable paper and other print media and Basic tab in the Software User’s Guide on the CD-ROM.)
Printouts are too light.
If this problem occurs when making copies or printing received faxes, set Toner Save mode to Off in the machine menu settings. (See Toner Save.)
Set Toner Save mode to Off in the Advanced tab in the printer driver. (See Advanced tab in the Software User’s Guide on the CD-ROM.)
Network difficulties
Difficulties
Suggestions
Cannot print over a wired Network.
If you are having Network problems see the Network User's Guide on the CD-ROM for more information.
Make sure your machine is powered on and is on-line and in the Ready mode. Print the Network Configuration list to see your current Network settings. (See How to print a report.) Reconnect the LAN cable to the hub to verify that the cable and network connections are good. If possible, try connecting the machine to a different port on your hub using a different cable. If the connections are good, the lower LED of the back panel of the machine will be green.
The network scanning feature does not work.
The network PC Fax Receive feature does not work.
The network printing feature does not work.
(Windows®) The firewall setting on your PC may be rejecting the necessary network connection. Follow the instructions below to configure Windows® Firewall. If you are using other personal firewall software, see the User’s Guide for your software or contact the software manufacturer.
(Windows® XP SP2)
1
Click the Start button, Control Panel, Network and Internet Connections and then Windows Firewall. Make sure that Windows Firewall on the General tab is set to On.
2
Click the Advanced tab and Settings... button of the Network Connection Settings.
3
Click the Add button.
4
To add port 54925 for network scanning, enter the information below:
1. In Description of service Enter any description, for example “Brother Scanner”.
2. In Name or IP address (for example 192.168.0.12) of the computer hosting this service on your network Enter “Localhost”.
3. In External Port number for this service Enter “54925”.
4. In Internal Port number for this service Enter “54925”.
5. Make sure UDP is chosen.
6. Click OK.
5
Click the Add button.
6
To add port 54926 for network PC Fax, enter the information below:
1. In Description of service: Enter any description, for example “Brother PC Fax”.
2. In Name or IP address (for example 192.168.0.12) of the computer hosting this service on your network Enter “Localhost”.
3. In External Port number for this service: Enter “54926”.
4. In Internal Port number for this service: Enter “54926”.
5. Make sure UDP is chosen.
6. Click OK.
7
If you still have trouble with your network connection, click the Add button.
8
To add port 137 for network scanning, network printing and network PC Fax receiving, enter the information below:
1. In Description of service: - Enter any description, for example “Brother PC Fax receiving”
2. In Name or IP address (for example 192.168.0.12) of the computer hosting this service on your network Enter “Localhost”.
3. In External Port number for this service: Enter “137”.
4. In Internal Port number for this service: Enter “137”.
5. Make sure UDP is chosen.
6. Click OK.
9
Make sure if the new setting is added and is checked, and then click OK.
The network scanning feature does not work.
The network PC Fax Receive feature does not work.
The network printing feature does not work.
(continued)
(Windows Vista®):
1
Click the Start button, Control Panel, Network and Internet, Windows Firewall and click Change settings.
2
When the User Account Control screen appears, do the following.
Users who have administrator rights: Click Continue.
For users who do not have administrator rights: Enter the administrator password and click OK.
3
Make sure that Windows Firewall on the General tab is set to On.
4
Click the Exceptions tab.
5
Click the Add port... button.
6
To add port 54925 for network scanning, enter the information below:
1. In Name Enter any description. (for example “Brother Scanner”)
2. In Port number Enter “54925”.
3. Make sure UDP is chosen. Then click OK.
7
Click the Add port... button.
8
To add port 54926 for Network PC Fax, enter the information below:
1. In Add port... Enter any description. (for example “Brother PC Fax”)
2. In Name Enter “54926”.
3. Make sure Port number is chosen. Then click UDP.
9
Make sure that the new setting is added and is checked, and then click OK.
10
If you still have trouble with your network connection such as network scanning or printing, check File and Printer Sharing box in the Exceptions tab and then click Apply.
Your computer cannot find your machine.
(Windows®) The firewall setting on your PC may be rejecting the necessary network connection. (For details, see the instructions above.)
(Macintosh) Re-select your machine in the Device Selector application located in Macintosh HD/Library/Printers/Brother/Utilities/DeviceSelector or from the Model pop-up menu of ControlCenter2.