I have the same problem. I have had 2 HP printers now. The current heap of junk is the HP officejet pro 8100. The heap of junk before that was the 6000. The 6000 was BAD. I thought no printer in the world could be that bad again and I was safe if I bought the 8100. WRONG.
It never just works without some kind of problem, its offline, or it says the ink level detector is faulty or it says the ink is run out when you can hear loads of it sloshing around in the cartridge or it plain just does nothing for no other reason than it is a hateful thing intended to make my life harder. It just never works. You have to constantly go through a 20 minute fiddle with it to get it to print and then 2 days later when you want to print something else it is back not working again.
And what about when you power cycle it - it shunts back and forward, draws paper through, shunts some more, moves the cartridges to the middle, moves them back, does it again, clunks, rolls the rollers, stops, rolls them more... it just goes on and on. Whatever engineer programmed that startup sequence hated me and maybe wasn't that clever.
And then there is the software. OMG. Instead of one clear simple software program to manage there is a whole suite of bloatware, programs that do nothing, programs that do the same as each other, programs to sell you stuff, complex menus, baffling interfaces and more....
As I type this my daughter came downstairs - how can she printer her English homework. Just print it I said. How stupid was I ? Well I was a dumb as mud readers. Of course she can't just print it - doh! Silly me. I have to stop everything, Go to her computer and fix it. So I look in the print queue. There is a document in there half transmitted. I delete that. I send a test page to the printer, nothing happens. I have to delete that while I am shouting downstairs to the office to ask her if anything has come out. Then I try and send another test page - this time it gives a popup - it thinks the ink level sensor is faulty and continuing with no ink is dangerous. Downstairs I go, take out each cartridge one by one and shake it to find there is loads of ink in all of them. I go back upstairs. No I have to wait because I triggered it's booby trap. It's IED, I lifted the lid. Now it must go through all of the rollers rolling, paper shunting, carriage going back and forwards, over and over until it's ready. At least I hope its ready its quite hard to tell. I print another test page, have to shout down to her to see if that worked and it did and finally I can print the English homework. All of this to print one black and white page of text. ONE PAGE OF BLACK AND WHITE TEXT - took all this. And you know what - in 2 days when she does her history homework it will be back to square one.
And don't get me started on the control panel / display / LED / Buttons thing on the front. How useless and over complex and confusing is that? They flash, they don't, there are loads of different colors and it's all pointless. Not one time - EVER - have I been able to fix it (even though I should not have to fix it) using any of those buttons or lights. The only thing they seem to be good at is starting of the whole roller, motor, paper feed, cartridge back and forth nightmare. The only 2 buttons what would be god to have on there are not present. These would be 1) A fix my HP printer because it doesn't work 'again' button and 2) a self destruct button.
I am not a serial complainer doing it for the sake of it - I have an HP elitebook laptop that is actually very good - but I presume that someone else (not HP) designed and built it and HP just badges it.
I speak only truth when I say I would never never never never never never never never never never
ever
buy another HP printer again.