How to Recover or Reinstall Chipless Software for Epson XP 4100 4101 4105 Printers

Today we’re going to talk about how to recover chipless software. You’ve bought a chipless printer, and it looks like this. It’s asking for cartridges. Your printer has a chipless firmware installed by the seller, but you somehow wiped it out.

We’ve broken this process down into three steps to make this tutorial easier to follow. I’ll provide a milestone that proves the step was successful. If you do not achieve that milestone, just go back and figure out what went wrong and try to correct it. I’m going to put a bit of oomph under each milestone, so you know that you achieved it.

Let’s get started.

Preparation

You will first need to send out two emails. One of these should go to a friend with a PC, as the installation software only runs on Microsoft Windows PCs. If you don’t have a friend with a PC, it’s time to make a new friend. The second email will be to the seller. Besides the order info, you will want to provide the printer’s serial number because the recovery key is tied to the serial number.

However, some sellers may be reluctant to hand over this code, so be really nice when making your request. Some sellers use a bulk update key, so it’s not always possible for them to give you the unique recovery code. This video will cover both scenarios: what to do if you receive a recovery code and what to do if you don’t. To find your printer’s serial number, just raise the printer lid and take a peek inside.

Step 1: Downloading the Firmware

Regardless of whether you have the recovery code or not, you need to install the appropriate firmware. Visit inkchip.net and click the SOFT tab. Scroll down and find the XP 4105 model. Notice that there are four columns on this page. Under the first, you can find a video for installation, and the second is where you go to download the firmware.

Once you have downloaded this firmware, you should find it in your downloads folder as an RAR file. An RAR is just another way to compress files like a zipped folder. If you don’t have a decompressor, we suggest 7zip, free software you can utilize to decompress the file.

After installing 7zip, you can right-click on the software and extract it to a folder. You can give it a name or just use the file name. Here’s the folder that we just decompressed. So far, we’ve downloaded one file from INKCHIP that contains the compressed firmware, and by using 7zip, you can decompress this file into a folder, so there is a lot of installation software in the folder.

But we haven’t done anything yet. Sometimes people get confused at this step, wondering why, even once they’ve installed 7zip, their printers are still asking for cartridges. Proceed to step two to learn what to do next.

MILESTONE: Downloaded one file from INKCHIP, decompressed it into a folder, and can locate this installation file in the folder.

Step 2: Installing the Firmware

I’ll use a separate window to demonstrate what’s happening with the printer. You haven’t put anything on the printer yet, so it will look like this. In the folder, you should see this file. If you do not, go back and figure out what you did wrong in the first step.

Double-click to run this file, and you’re going to see a couple of windows that display steps one, two, three, and so on. You will then come to this place. There are two windows. The top window tells us that we are trying to put this firmware, 0.2.36, onto your printer. The window below shows you what printer you will have available.

If you don’t see any printers, that means you haven’t plugged in the printer with a USB port. You have to plug in with a USB cable—you cannot do this wirelessly. As soon as you plug into the USB port, it should immediately show up in the window. Notice the status says new version. Do not click start when it says new version. Just keep the window like this, and walk to the printer.

Power your printer off. You should see the printer disappear from your computer. Now hold down these four keys: triangle, down arrow, left arrow, and power. Once you release, you’ll see the printer pull up a secret firmware update mode. You should see the printer model number show up blank. The connection type will be USB, and the model is unknown.

Click start and start installing the firmware into the printer. You should see the processes run through to 100% on your computer. It will then give you a choice to finish, so click finish, and the program will shut down.

However, you will need to leave the printer running for a while. When the printer is finally done, it will show you that it’s finished. You should also see that it’s displaying the ROM version, 02.36, which is exactly the version we want. If you don't see this screen, your firmware update was not successful, so keep working and playing around with the first two steps until you get this screen. Once you get this screen, you’re ready to shut the printer off and continue.

Press the ok button—you’ve just completed step two. Pushing the ok button will shut down the printer, so you can just power it on again. Many people think that once the chipless firmware has been installed, they are good to go, and their printer will be fine. Those folks are often surprised to find that they still receive the same error window that asks for cartridges.

Although you have successfully installed the firmware, you still need to activate it, a process that we will demonstrate in the third step.

MILESTONE: Saw the congratulations screen letting you know that the firmware has been installed.

Step 3: Activation

Return to inkchip.net and click SOFT. Once again, scroll down to find your printer model, and this time, select the download button under the activation column. If you cannot see this download, it’s likely because an anti-virus software blocked it—Norton is the most common culprit.

Don’t worry, INKCHIP’s downloads are virus-free, but they are often blocked because the software is not signed by authority, and so computers are often unhappy about that and try to prevent it from being opened. Simply disable your anti-virus software or add an exception for the INKCHIP download, and you should be set.

If you do not have a recovery code, go back to the INKCHIP site and click the buy button. Select your printer model from the following screen and purchase the activation key. The key should arrive in your inbox instantly, but if it doesn’t show up after a few minutes, try checking your spam folder. If it’s not there either, contact INKCHIP support.

Select your printer on the activation window. If your selection menu is blank, try restarting your computer and printer. You may need to leave your computer unplugged for a couple of hours before powering it back on. Notice that I clicked the refresh button, and the printer showed up.

For you lucky ones that already have the recovery code, you can just click paste and then click recover. You may discover that not all of the recovery keys work. In that case, you might try checking the line breaks and spaces before and after the key. If it still doesn’t work, you’ll probably just need to buy a new key from INKCHIP.

You can just click activate online to use a new key, and a new window will pop up asking for the key. Paste it there. It will then verify the key on the internet, so you will need a network connection to do this. Once it’s confirmed, the next window is critical. If you do not get this verification popup, you did not complete step three successfully. Note that I mentioned three things. The first is that your activation was successful, the second is that it provides you with a recovery code that you should paste somewhere safe in case you need to use it again. The third thing I mentioned is to restart your printer.

Let’s take another look at the printer. Up until this point, you should have been seeing the error message, but upon restarting your printer, you should find that the error has disappeared. You can now use the left and right buttons to click and select the ink icon and check the ink level. All the ink levels are full even though we don’t have a cartridge in the printer.

MILESTONE: Achieved a full ink level without a cartridge.