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I recently purchased a Brother Monochrome laser printer (Model HL-2140) a few months ago. So far this has been a really great printer! It prints very quickly, has very clear quality, and is so much more efficient compared to an inkjet printer like my old Lexmark 3-in-1.

So far the printer has done great, however, I started getting a strange error message in the middle of printing the other day. It completely stopped printing the sheets, and a box (prompt) displayed on my computer monitor. It said, “Please Clean the Corona Wire.”

How to Clean the Corona Wire in a Brother Laser Printer HL-2140 and Fix the Error Message:

To clean the corona wire in the brother laser printer, it said to remove the drum/toner assembly from the printer. This is very easy to do, you simply pull down the front of the printer, and press a small green tab down and pull. Then the toner and drum assembly will quickly come out.

After that, it says you must clean the corona wire by moving a small green square back and forth several times. It seemed kind of strange to me, but I did it anyways. In the upper right corner of the drum/toner assembly, there is a small green/blue square that can be moved back and forth. I did this several times.

I then placed the unit inside, and the error message went away for a minute. However it still wouldn’t print and the error message came right back up. I was a bit frustrated since I have only owned this printer for about 2-3 months.

But then I realized something: The toner button had been blinking for about a month. I had already purchased a high yield black toner cartridge for the brother laser printer (Tn-330/TN360). I purchased it online, and had it stored for when I eventually ran out of toner.

I thought perhaps the error message had something to do with the old toner. Maybe it was out?? So I once again opened the front of the laser printer, and removed the toner/drum assembly. I pressed a green tab, removed the old toner, and then added the brand new high yield black laser toner cartridge. The whole process was very simple (you gotta love today’s technology).

I then quickly “cleaned the corona wire” a few times again just to be safe. I re-installed the toner, and the printer was up and running. So apparently it will throw this error when  you are out of toner. Now the printer is running great again, and I really like this printer.

If you are still using an ink jet printer, then you are living in the stone age. I was reluctant to buy a new laser printer, but now I love it. The toner only costs $30-60 and lasts for months. I print hundreds of labels out each month-just to give you an idea of how long it lasts.

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My wife has a Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop/notebook computer that recently started having trouble. We use her laptop quite a bit to watch movies (Netflix and Youtube) all the time, and I also use it to make blog posts quite frequently as well.

What was the problem? The computer’s LCD monitor screen kept blinking on and off (from light to dim lighing). The problem was that the component (power plug jack) in the back of the computer was not making a good connection. At first I thought perhaps it was the AC power adapter that plugs into the wall. But after a little research online, I figured out that it must have been the power plug.

Now, I am a good with computers, but the most I have ever done to a computer was simply installing Ram (I upgraded Ram on my HP Pavilion 513x and the Dell Inspiron Laptop). So taking a laptop computer almost completely apart was a big challenge. However, I felt up to it!

Here are the Tools Needed to Repair the Laptop Power Jack Plug for the Dell Inspiron 1200:

1. Rosin-core electronics solder (to repair the jack)

2. A soldering Iron

3. A set of presicion screwdrivers (the really tiny ones)

4. About 2-4 hours time (depending on your level of experience).

So I got off and started to disassembled all the parts. I kept all the different sized screws in different cups to keep track of them (I recommend you do the same or you will have a mess). I also got online and dell has a great tutorials with pictures on their website on how to disassemble virtually all parts of the laptop until you get down to the motherboard.

So I started to remove all the parts. First the back cover. Then the hard drive. Then the CD/DVD optical drive. Then the extra Ram. Then the lcd monitor, keyboard, etc. I was actually starting to get a little nervous as I didn’t think it would take that long. I literally had to take the whole thing apart, even the processor!

So I got down to the power jack and inspected it. I felt like the jack itself was good, it just wasn’t making a good connection and the monitor kept blinking from a light setting to a darker setting. It was really annoying!

So I looked at the jack and wiggled it a bit. Aha! It wasn’t making a good connection. In fact, it didn’t look like it had been soldered very well at all.

At this point, I knew I could have taken the whole thing off, cleaned it, then re-attached it and soldered it. But I am lazy and inexperienced and I didn’t want to risk damage to the part. So I felt like instead it just needed some more solder on all the connections.

So I whipped out the old solder iron, and went to work. I am a newbie in soldering, but I found a great video on youtube on how to solder. So I carefully cleaned the tip of the solder iron, and then turned it on and let it get hot. Then I “tinned” the tip with a dab of solder and flicked it onto a piece of cardboard to rid the excess solder.

I then carefully heated each small leg of the power jack, and then added a good dab of solder. I worked on each leg and made sure it had a good layer of solder on it. One on leg, I accidentally got the green motherboard coating melted a bit, but it didn’t harm anything.

I then spent the next 30-40 minutes re-assembling the laptop. It wouldn’t have taken me so long, however, I accidentally left a small screw inside when assembling, and heard it rattle and thought, “NOOOO.” So I had to take it back apart, get the screw, and then continue putting it back together. All in all it was easier to put back together than it was to take it apart.

I plugged in the Dell Inspiron 1200, crossed my fingers, said a prayer, and hit the power button. I got a scare because at first it said, Invalid configuration. I thought to myself, “oh no I screwed it up.” But then it booted fine. It worked like a charm!

No more blinky laptop LCD screen! All it needed was a better solder connection to the motherboard. And I feel so accomplished and like I know more about computers! In fact, I now realize how easy it is to replace things such as a hard drive, etc. If anything else breaks, I will be ready to fix it! Except for the one loose key that always wants to pop up!

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