C Troubleshooting and routine maintenance

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

See Improving the print quality.

Vertical black lines when receiving

One of the corona wires for printing may be dirty. Clean the four corona wires. (See Cleaning the corona wires.)

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 Brother or 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.)

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.

If an external telephone is connected to the machine, send a manual fax by lifting the handset of the external telephone and dialling the number. Wait to hear fax receiving tones before pressing Mono Start or Color 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.

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:NG’ 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.)

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 Fax Receive Code [default setting is ( 51)]. 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.

Key operations do not work

Check that the control panel is fitted correctly on the machine. Reinstall the control panel.

The machine beeps when you try to access the Setup Receive and Setup Send menus.

If the Fax key 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.

Vertical black line appears in copies.

Black vertical lines on copies are typically caused by dirt or correction fluid on the glass strip, or one of the corona wires for printing is dirty. (See Cleaning the scanner and Cleaning the corona wires.)

No printout.

The machine prints unexpectedly or it prints garbage.

The machine prints the first couple of pages correctly, then some pages have text missing.

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 select A4, Legal or Folio.

The machine is not printing or has stopped printing and the machine’s Status LED turns yellow.

Press Job Cancel. As the machine cancels the job and clears it from the memory it may produce an incomplete printout.

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 TW-Brother MFC-XXXX.

Network scanning does not work.

See Network difficulties.

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.)

The machine does not load paper.

The LCD shows No Paper or a Paper Jam message.

The machine does not feed paper from the MP tray.

How do I print 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.)

Which paper can I use?

You can use plain paper, recycled paper, envelopes and labels that are made for laser machines. (For details, see Acceptable paper and other media.)

There is a paper jam.

(See Paper jams.)

Printed pages are curled.

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 media and Basic tab in the Software User’s Guide on the CD-ROM.)

Printouts are too light.

Cannot print over a wired Network.

If you are using a wireless connection or 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 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 upper 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.

(For Windows^® only) The firewall setting on your PC may be rejecting the necessary network connection. Follow the instructions below to configure your firewall. If you are using personal firewall software, see the User’s Guide for your software or contact the software manufacturer.

Your computer cannot find your machine.

For Windows^® users: The firewall setting on your PC may be rejecting the necessary network connection. For details, see the instruction above.

For Macintosh^® users: Re-select your machine in the DeviceSelector application located in Macintosh HD/Library/Printers/Brother/Utilities or from the Model pop-up menu of ControlCenter2.