Today we're going to solve a problem for Epson EcoTank. The scanner error E-02 and there's a small number underneath, 100016. You'll find your printer start okay, and at random times, suddenly, you've got this error. You also turn off the printer, and turn it back on, and the failure doesn't go away. Now, this problem may be caused by a couple of things.

At power-on, the printer will try to move the scanner to the left and scan a small patch of white as a signal that everything works okay. The printer doesn't have eyes, so it doesn't know what's going on. It depends on a couple of sensors. First thing, you may have something physically make the scanner unit not able to move to the left, including you have a dirty cable. So there's no power to the unit and the scanner cannot move, or you have something physically obstruct the pathway of the scanner and something mechanical.

The next thing is the lamp might be burnt out. If you don't see a white light, that means the bulb burnt out so it cannot scan the little patch, so the sensor will not be able to recognize you moving to the left. Thirdly, you might have a bad motherboard or, to be politically correct, he mainboard. For a printer very new and this clean, I don't suspect any physical obstruction for the movement path of the scanner. I'll take it out, and I'll clean the cable first.

I hope you can find out it's just a dirty cable or a misplaced cable. However, if everything doesn't work out, you can always find spare parts by going to www.bchtechnologies.com, and then go to the printer parts. Go to Epson and see if we have spare parts for you. ET-2720 is easy to take apart and remove the two screws in front. Example, sides. Now, you can lift the whole scanner unit. There are three cables, and they're in different sizes, so don't worry about mixing them. Pull them out and clean them.

I'll take a dry cloth, start cleaning. If you use sandpaper, use a super, superfine, like a 2,000 grit sandpaper. Most times, the dry cloth do the work. You don't need to go to the sandpaper. Another thing you can try is to use the rubber eraser. To insert the cable back, it's easier to take the side panel off. Use a screwdriver or something to push the tab in and then use your hand. Just jiggle it, and you can take the whole cover off.

Now, pay attention to which direction the cable goes in. From the smallest cable, you can see the contact points are on the top and the medium cable contact points on the bottom. For the cable, the smallest cable, the shiny side should be on the top, and the blue side should be on the bottom. For the medium cable, the blue side should be on the top, and the shiny side should be on the bottom. Now, we put the bigger cable just like the two other cables on the side. There's a sticky double-sided tape that helps us to stabilize the wires.

Please don't put the side cover back yet because we're going to plug in power to see it works. If it doesn't have power, that's because your bigger cable is not installed correctly, try to reinstall it. Now, you can see it can move. The problem's solved. Otherwise, you may have to take the scanner unit apart and see all the sensors and see if there are mechanical problems.

Try to use or color copy a page before you put the side panel back. Now we know the scanner is working. The only problem is it seems the nozzles are clogged. Now we can put the side panel back and then insert the two screws in the front, and the unit is ready for some nozzle cleaning. After that, it's ready to go.