Is your DeskWriter or DeskJet having problems feeding paper or giving you seemingly erroneous out-of-paper messages? If so, you may have dirty rollers.

Hewlett-Packard recently announced a Paper Feed Cleaning Kit, which cleans your rollers and corrects the problem. According to HP, if you have a DeskWriter or DeskJet 510 or 520, DeskJet 550C, or DeskJet 560C - with a serial number beginning with US36 through US43H, or a serial number from ES41711001 through ES45112001 - your printer's rollers may need cleaning once or twice in their lifetime.

http://www.dmo.hp.com/peripherals/printers/ cleankit.html

HP says they changed their roller rubber specification back in June of 1993, not realizing that the new roller would respond badly to a combination of use, humidity, paper dust, and other factors. In March of 1994, HP switched back to the older rubber formulation.

HP plans to automatically send cleaning kits to the owners of potentially problematic DeskWriters and DeskJets who registered before July of 1994, so contact HP if you didn't register or if you have questions. HP has set up voice/fax numbers specifically for the cleaning kit, and most of the numbers are toll-free. The URL below takes you to a document that explains the problem, includes a fax form, and lists phone numbers for the U.S., Canada, and many parts of Europe (apparently, most of the problem printers were sold in those areas):

ftp://ftp-boi.external.hp.com/pub/printers/ djet_pjet_dwriter/doc/djkit.txt

Kudos to HP for making an effort to inform people of the problem and ship them the solution.

Information from:
HP propaganda