Red "Paper" light blinking Brother HL-2040

I agree with another su=olution. The paper light was blinking on and off sugesting a paper jam. Paper had jammed in the back roller and displaced the small lever out of its slot.
Open rear cover, open paper guide by pulling it downwards so you can see the rollers, In the middle of the guide you will see a black lever about 25mm long to the right of this you will see a small slot. The guide will have been pushed to the left of this slot and the Plastic cam will be bowing toward the front of the printer (about 3mm). You need to pull the 25mm lever towards the rear of the printer and then slide the plastic cam to the right so the blade part of the cam slides into its correct slot. The blade is about half a mm thick and the slot is the same and is about 60mm to the right of the lever Use a torch to see it easier. This is a 2 minute job once you see what is wrong.
Hope we have helped someone out there fix a printer

Alright, I had this same exact problem and have tried darn near everything. I even called brother to no avail. HOWEVER i have solved the problem with help from Fixya. Here are a few steps to take.

First take off the front cover. Pull the tabs on the side. Pull out the big toner and cartridge. Do you see the blue tab? Slide the tab from right to left 30 times. Pull out the black cartridge and check for a paper jam. Replace the cartridge and toner and reinsert into the printer. Turn the printer on and see if the light goes on.

If that doesnt work, open the back cover and pull down the black cover to see if there is any paperjam on the roller.

Turn off your printer. However you are connected, whether it be usb or other please unplug. Hold down the go button and turn the printer on. Keep the go button down the whole time. All led's should be lit. Release the go button. Let the printer do its thing for a second. Hit the go button 8 times exactly. This resets everything. Plug your usb or other back in.

If this still hasnt helped, and it didnt help me either you can try one last solution that i got from here.

Open the back cover again and pull down the black cover. Do you see the little one inch tab holder in the middle. Keep an eye on your paper light and move it to the left and push it up to the roller, if that doesnt work move it to the right and then push it up. Keep an eye on the red paper button. I fiddled and forced the tab to the left and boom i saw the green ready light go on. YES!!!!!!! Flipped up the black cover put the back cover up and Im back to printin.

I know other will benefit from this so i took some time and posted my solution. Good luck guys. Happy printing.

I found just doing this one simple thing sorted the problem.

First take off the front cover. Pull the tabs on the side. Pull out the big toner and cartridge. Do you see the blue tab on the top shaped like an arrow/triangle? Slide the tab from right to left - reinsert toner close door.
Hope it works for you

JPW

OK, this may not be a printer problem. I've been having the same issue with my brother HL-5250DN printing out a word document. After getting to the brink of despair, I tried printing a different document, and that worked fine.

The document that wouldn't print was a job application form with lots of complicated tables and locked fields. I suspect that the page dimensions on the document were set up incorrectly, but as they were locked, I couldn't print. So the problem was with the document, not the printer.

So what to do if you want to print out such an awkward document? What I did was download a PDF converter - for example Primo Pdf (http://www.primopdf.com/) or better still the open source PDF Creator (http://www.pdfforge.org/) - installed, printed the troublesome document to a PDF file (using the print option in Word), then printed out the PDF file to the Brother printer.

Hey presto!

Good luck,

Will

I was printing labels. The red light would instantlty come on with the blinking amber paper light as soon as I clicked print.
All my problems were fixed when I unplugged the USB and power for 10 seconds to clear the memory from the previous print job and used the front tray.

My 2040 had the same blinking light issue. I have a solution that worked! I fed one sheet through the front of the unit (where you could put in larger paper or one sheet at a time) Then magically it started feeding from the tray. Now it works fine!

The document you are trying to print is being sent to the MANUAL paper feed, instead of the auto paper drawer.

I had this same issue and could not figue it out for a long time. I would have to shut off the printer, dissconnect it, clear all print jobs and restart the printing. Then it wouldl happen again with this one document I was trying to print. Then I remembered that I had set that document to use the manual paper feed on a different printer (in MS WORD printing options). The document was a form which I USED to have to inseat in the manual feed on the old printer. But I had made some changes and no longer needed that manual feed.

Anyway , the doc was still set to go to the manual feed, I changed it in WORD and it worked fine.

I'm not exactly sure how the manual feed works. Once I figued out what it was doing, once the red light blinks, even if I open the manual feed and insert a sheet of paper, it won't print. I guess I'll play with it more to figue out exactly WHEN it wants me to insert the paper.

Hope this helps.

Don't throw it out yet. Here is how I got mine to work: flip down the back cover and lower the flap that covers the rollers. On the inside of that flap, right in the middle of it, you will see a small, one inch long lever that helps keep the paper up against the roller. This lever was moved to the left a bit to far, so I nudged it to the right. As soon as I did this, the light stopped blinking and the printer worked.

THANKS MY PROBLEM IS SOLVED THERE WAS A PAPER JAME WITHIN THE DRUM AREA OPEN UP THE DRUM AREA BY REMOVING THE TONER CARTRIDGE AND IT SHOULD WORK

I went throught all the postings but paper (RED) light kept on blinking. So I change the Drum Unit and it worked. The Cause was that the drum Unit had so much dust in it.

Good luck

I too have had this problem. While the first place to check is an actual paper jam, if you don't find one, try the following:

Turn the printer off by disconnecting power. Before applying power, cancel all print jobs from the PC. Plug the printer back in and then prepare a job for printing but don't sent it yet. Go into the properties and make sure the paper size is the correct size.

My thinking is that the problem is caused by sending to the printer, a jop using a paper size that is not available. This may be one reason feeding paper into the manual slot works, it may bypass the paper size check feature.

By disconnecting power from the printer and canceling all print jobs, you insure any previous pending jobs with the wrong paper size will be sent.

Hope this works.

I've just tried everything suggested and it still won't work!!!!

HL 2040 laser printer - Assuming jammed paper bits are not the cause (if for example the paper does not feed out of the tray, or just barely does), then there are 2 good articles to read, which clearly point out that the culprit would be paper dust encrusted or worn out ribbed ribber belting on the pickup and separator rollers.

Try cleaning the dust off or else the rubber belt would have to be replaced.

These are the articles to read -
1. http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5140326.html
2. http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/BSC/public/eu/gb/en/faq/faq/000000/002000/000024/faq002024_006.html?reg=eu&c=gb%E2%8C%A9=en%E2%88%8F=hl2070n_all

Same flashing red paper light. I found a rolled up piece of paper when looking behind the door on the back of the machine. I dragged it out and now all is good :-)

Same problem - when I hold the go button down, it goes through all the lights, and then the blinking alternates between ready and paper light blinking.

Darn near tossed this old printer.
After clearing a real paper jam, I had the exact same problem and nothing seemed to work, until ... I found that the 1" lever wouldn't go to the right far enough (looking at the rear end of the printer). When fiddling with that lever, I noticed how everything attached to it moved along with it, so I pressed against the far right end of it and suddenly it somehow clicked into position. Problem solved.

Thanks, Tdogg23! Your solution was not exactly what we needed, but it put us on the right road. The 1" black tab in the center has a spring that must somehow affect the sensor, and the spring was just floating free along the rod to the left of the tab. We slid it to the R and put the R arm that was sticking out in the slot and bingo, we were in business (obviously, we'd unplugged before doing this!) You will need a flashlight and probably someone to hold it.

If the red light is flashing try to insert paper manually. I was able to take a sheet of paper and insert into the front of the feed and it works. Sometimes documents can be saved in weird formats resulting in manual feeding of paper.
Hope that works!!

Solution 2 rocks!!!! Brother should put it in the manual.

I had this issue as well after completely clearing a paper jam from my second paper tray. After making sure I had every piece of paper to make the full sheet the LED's were still reporting a paper jam. I reseated all of the paper, and the toner cartridge. I reseated the second tray as well. Still the same issue. This is what corrected this for me.

• If you have a second tray try disconnecting the second tray (Just lift the printer off of it.) Restart the printer and see if you still have the error.
• If you do then check then grab a phillips head screw driver. Unscrew the 4 screws that hold the metal plate on top of the 2nd paper tray motor. There are two optical sensors that have little plastic levers that activate them. In my case one of these was not seated anymore. Gently pressing it back into the clip allowed it to move properly again.
• Reattached the metal plate and reconnect to the printer.
• Power cycle the unit.
• Print a test page from Tray Two.
  

I just changed the cartrige and the no paper ight comes on,,,, There is no jam and there is paper. Have tried all the suggestions and nothing is working,,,,,, Brother HL 2040 printer
Please Help I have to get documents out today,

Thanks

Try printing from the manual feed tray. I had the same problem as nagarjuna, where the printer would print a simple page, but not a page (Word) full of tables (printer just blinked the yellow paper light). When I put a paper in the manual feed, voila!, it printed.

Printer keeps saying paper jam, open back door.

I have done this 10x and nothing changes.

Narijuana's fix worked!

Did you take out the tab for the cartridge? Is this a new cartridge?

I had aproblem with my laser printer brother hl 2040 ,a red light blinks at the flasher