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Canon B202–B205 Error Codes: Meaning, Causes & Fixes

Canon Printer display showing GUIDE — FixCode Guide error code graphic

B201, B202, B203, B204 and B205 are B200's numeric siblings, and this guide's central fact is one Canon states by the way it documents them: Canon gives the whole B200-B207 range a single wording, a single procedure and a single likely cause — it does not publish separate meanings for the individual numbers. This page therefore does the honest thing a per-code page usually cannot: it documents the family exactly as Canon does (the service-centre wording from the MX490 manual, the power-reset procedure and print-head verdict from Canon USA's B203 article, B205's place in the G2010 code list), explains what the shared procedure is really testing, and warns you off the invented per-code definitions that fill the vacuum online.

Safety first. Work unplugged. Canon's procedures consistently put 'turn off and unplug' ahead of any internal inspection, and covers should only be opened as far as the model's consumer documentation describes (carriage and tank access); everything deeper is service work, on machines connected to mains electricity. Inside a PIXMA, observe Canon MX922's labelled warning: do not touch the clear encoder film, the white carriage belt or the ink tubes during jam clearing and cleaning — the film is both fragile and a diagnostic component. Treat ink as a chemical consumable: wash skin contact, keep cartridges and MegaTank ink away from eyes, and never defeat the ink-out protection (holding Stop for 5 seconds to disable remaining-ink detection) as a routine — Canon warns that printing under ink-out conditions may damage the machine and accepts no liability for that damage. On imageRUNNER machines add heat and scale: the fixing unit runs at fuser temperatures (the E001 thresholds in Canon's manuals are in the hundreds of degrees), internal parts are service-only, and a copier that has tripped a fixing protection code should be left to a technician rather than repeatedly reset and retried.

The B200 family: one wording for B200 through B207

Start with how Canon itself files these codes, because the filing is the meaning. In Canon's user manuals, B200 gets the family's defining entry: 'a printer error has occurred — turn the printer off and unplug the power cord, then contact the service center.' The MX490 manual then lists B201, B202, B203 and B204 under a single shared sentence: 'An error requiring you to contact the service center has occurred.' No individual causes, no individual procedures — Canon groups them because Canon services them as a group. Canon USA's support article for B203 (ART171445) confirms the range treatment from the other side: its procedure is written for one code but its verdict sentence is written for eight — 'if the error code (B200-B207) reappears, the print head hardware has likely failed, and your printer needs service.' And B205's documentation fits the same frame: it appears in Canon's G2010 support-code list alongside B202, B203 and B204, under the family's shared handling. So the family's structure, from Canon's own documents, is: one class of fault (internal hardware, print head the named likely failure), one owner procedure (the manual power reset, once), one endpoint (service). Everything else in this guide is the working-out of those three facts — and any source that gives you five different diseases for five consecutive numbers is inventing the differences Canon declined to publish.

B201: what Canon documents

B201 is the first of the MX490 manual's grouped entries, B201-B204, all carrying the single sentence 'An error requiring you to contact the service center has occurred', with the manual's standing operational note for the group: unplugging the printer deletes any faxes stored in its memory (the MX490 is a fax model, and Canon heads this whole section of the manual with that warning). That is the complete Canon record for B201 individually — the shared wording, the shared warning, and, via Canon USA's B203 article, the family's shared procedure and verdict: one manual power reset; if the code reappears, the print head hardware has likely failed and the printer needs service. This page gives B201 no private cause, because Canon gives it none. What can be said truthfully is positional: B201 sits at the head of a hardware-error range whose every documented signal points the same way, and an owner holding a B201 should do exactly what an owner holding B204 should do — protect stored faxes, run the one documented reset, and let the reappearance test deliver Canon's verdict. The temptation to treat the lowest number as the mildest fault has no basis in Canon's documents; the range is a range because the printer reports a class, not a component.

B202: what Canon documents

B202 appears in two Canon documents captured for this guide: the MX490 manual's B201-B204 group, under the shared 'contact the service center' wording, and the G2010 series support-code list, where B202 is listed with B203, B204 and B205 among that machine's codes. Neither document assigns B202 a cause of its own, and this page follows them. The G2010 appearance is worth one remark, because it shows the family crossing platforms: the G2010 is a MegaTank model, a different ink architecture from the MX490's cartridges, yet Canon files B202 in the same undifferentiated service group on both — reinforcing that the B20x numbers mark the class of event (an internal error serious enough to end owner troubleshooting) rather than any platform-specific part. For the owner, B202's handling is the family handling, complete: retrieve stored faxes before unplugging if your model holds them; perform Canon's manual power reset once, exactly as the B203 article specifies (off, unplug, wait at least two minutes, replug, on); if B202 returns, the family's documented conclusion — print head hardware likely failed, printer needs service — is yours to act on, and no further owner step exists in Canon's documentation to try first.

B203: the code Canon chose to document the family with

B203 is the most useful number in the family, because Canon USA chose it for the family's one procedural article — 'Support Code B203' (ART171445) — and everything the family has by way of an owner procedure is written there. The procedure is a manual power reset, specified precisely: turn the printer off; unplug the power cord; wait at least two minutes; plug the cord back in; turn the printer on. Then the article's verdict, which is the family's verdict: if the error code (B200-B207) reappears, the print head hardware has likely failed, and your printer needs service. Read the article's structure as Canon's intent: it does not offer the reset as a hopeful ritual but as a diagnostic with two outcomes, and it pre-writes the conclusion for the bad one. B203 also appears, like B202, in both the MX490 group and the G2010 list, so the article's procedure is the one Canon reference an owner of any B20x code can legitimately follow. This site therefore routes the whole family through ART171445: whichever of B201-B205 is on your screen, B203's article is the procedure Canon published for you, and its two-minute unplug and its reappearance test are the entire owner-level content of this family's documentation.

B204 and B205: the far end of the documented range

B204 closes the MX490 manual's named group (B201-B204), carrying the same single sentence as its three companions — an error requiring you to contact the service center has occurred — and no individual documentation beyond it. B205 stands one step further out: it is not in the MX490 group, but it is in Canon's G2010 support-code list (with B202, B203 and B204), and Canon USA's family verdict explicitly spans B200-B207, which includes it. So B205's documentation, stated precisely, is: a listed support code on at least the G2010 series, inside the range for which Canon's published guidance is the B203 power reset followed, on reappearance, by the print-head-likely-failed service verdict. Neither number has a Canon-published cause, procedure variation or severity ranking, and this page invents none. Practically, the distance from B200 makes no difference to the owner's afternoon: the checks are the family's (stored faxes protected, one documented reset, reappearance read as the verdict), the call to Canon quotes the exact number shown, and the service centre's internal tables — which do go deeper than the consumer documents — take it from there. What an owner should not do with B204 or B205 is shop the internet's per-code tables for a more specific story; the next section explains what those tables are worth on this family.

The one procedure: what the manual power reset is actually testing

Canon's B203 article deserves a slower reading than it usually gets, because its two minutes are diagnostic, not superstitious. A full unplug — cord out, not just power off — drains the printer's internal power completely and forces every controller to cold-start when power returns. That distinguishes two worlds. In one, the B20x code was a corrupted internal state: a controller that latched a fault reading from a transient event (a power flicker, a disturbed start-up) and held it. The cold start rebuilds the state from scratch, the start-up self-checks pass, and the code is gone because its cause is gone. In the other world, the fault is physical — Canon's article names the print head hardware as the likely candidate — and no state rebuild changes it: the self-checks find the same failed hardware and the code reappears, during start-up or at the first print attempt. The reset is thus a sorting test with a published interpretation, which is why Canon's wording is conditional ('if the error code reappears...') rather than hopeful. It is also why the test is run once: a second and third reset re-run a test whose result you already have, on hardware Canon has told you is likely failed, and each power cycle of a failing print head stresses the part further. One reset, honestly read, is the whole procedure — everything after a reappearance is service logistics.

Why the print head is the family's named suspect

Canon USA's sentence — 'the print head hardware has likely failed' — is the only cause Canon attaches to this family anywhere in its consumer documentation, and it is worth understanding why the head earns that position. The print head is the one component in an inkjet that is simultaneously electrical (thousands of heater elements and their drive circuits), mechanical (mounted on the moving carriage) and consumable-adjacent (it ages with every page and every cleaning). Canon's code architecture reflects that centrality: the head has its own recognition codes (1401/1403, U051/U052), its own thermal code (5200), its own G-series failure group (7700 family) — and when the printer detects an internal hardware fault it cannot file more precisely, the head is statistically and structurally the first suspect. Note, however, the article's exact wording: 'likely'. Canon does not say the B20x codes diagnose the head; it says that when the family's one owner test (the power reset) fails to clear the code, the head is the probable failed part and service is the route. That is the correct confidence level to carry into the service conversation: a strong prior, not a diagnosis — the technician's job is to confirm or refute it with the machine open, and owners who arrive demanding a head replacement (or refusing one) are both ahead of Canon's evidence.

B201-B205 vs B200: is there any practical difference?

For the owner: almost none, and that answer is Canon's, not a shortcut. B200 is the family's head — it has the manual definition ('a printer error has occurred'), the deep page on this site, the LED rendering (P10), and the community/staff descriptions as a print head and general hardware failure. B201-B205 have none of that individual apparatus: they inherit the family's wording (via the MX490 group), the family's procedure (via B203's article) and the family's verdict (via the article's B200-B207 sentence). If a hierarchy exists inside Canon's internal service tables, Canon does not publish it to owners, and the owner-visible behaviour of the codes is identical: stop, protect stored faxes, one documented reset, service on reappearance. Two practical differences do exist at the margins. First, B200 is the number Canon's channels discuss, so an owner searching for B203 will find Canon's own article only because Canon filed the procedure under it — the search should always be for the family, not just your number. Second, when you call Canon or a service centre, quote your exact number rather than rounding it to B200: the service-side tables are finer-grained than the consumer ones, and the exact code is data their diagnosis uses even though yours cannot.

Before you unplug: the stored-fax warning Canon attaches to this family

One operational detail in Canon's documentation for this family causes more real-world loss than the codes themselves, and it is printed right in the MX490 manual's B201-B204 section: unplugging the printer deletes faxes stored in its memory. Fax models hold received faxes in memory whenever they cannot print — out of paper, out of ink, or stopped by an error like the very B20x code you are about to work on — and the family's documented procedure begins with unplugging. The order of operations therefore matters: before the power reset, check whether your printer is holding faxes (the MX line reports stored documents in memory through its display/menu when it can), and print or forward them if the machine's state allows. If the error prevents any printing at all, the faxes may be unrecoverable once the cord is out — Canon's warning is the notice of that, not a problem with a workaround in its documentation. The same logic extends, more mildly, to any unplug-based Canon procedure (5100, C000 and the rest of this batch carry the same warning in their model documentation). It takes thirty seconds to check and it is the only irreversible step in the whole family procedure — the one thing a careful owner does before Canon's step one.

What service does with a B20x code — and the repair decision

Canon does not publish its service-side procedure for this family, so this section confines itself to what the consumer documents support and what the owner must decide. What support can say: the technician has model-specific service documentation whose tables do subdivide these codes, test equipment for the head and the boards, and the parts channel for your model. The family's consumer verdict (print head hardware likely failed) tells you the most probable shape of the quote: diagnosis plus, most likely, a print head — a user-replaceable part on some models (where Canon's own head-replacement procedure exists), a service part on others. The owner's real decision is the economic one Canon itself teaches elsewhere in this batch (in its 5B00 absorber guidance): get the quote with the code and model stated, then weigh it against replacement — on an elderly MX- or MG-era machine, a head-level repair can approach the cost of a current equivalent printer, and neither Canon's documents nor this page will pretend otherwise. What not to authorise: exploratory parts swapping (a board 'to see if it helps') on a code whose documented prior is the head, or any repair sold as a 'B20x reset service' — Canon's documentation contains no reset for this family beyond the power cycle you have already run, and a shop selling one is selling you your own first step back.

The per-code tables online: why B202 does not mean what they say

This family attracts invented specificity like few others, because five consecutive numbers with no published distinctions are an irresistible canvas. The tables that result assign B201-B205 tidy separate faults — a sensor here, a board there, a voltage somewhere else — typically descended from technician folklore, service tables for different machine classes, or each other's copying. Test them against the Canon record this guide is built from: the MX490 manual groups B201-B204 under one sentence; Canon USA's article spans B200-B207 with one verdict; Canon's G2010 list files the numbers without distinction. No Canon document captured in this research gives B202 a meaning B204 does not share — so a source that does is not summarising Canon. The risk is not abstract: a per-code table that names a cheap part for your exact number sends you buying and fitting parts against a diagnosis Canon never made, on a family whose documented prior is the print head. This site's handling — family-level documentation, honestly labelled — is the alternative: less satisfying than five crisp definitions, and the only version Canon's evidence supports. If a service centre gives you a more specific reading of your B20x code, that is their internal documentation at work, and it outranks everything here — including this paragraph.

Codes and claims in this family we could not verify

Closing the family's file honestly: B206 and B207 are named only inside Canon USA's verdict sentence ('the error code B200-B207') — no Canon document captured in this research lists them individually for a specific model, describes them, or gives them handling beyond that sentence, so they receive no entries here beyond this mention. B208 and beyond in the B2xx space were not found in any Canon document checked. Within B201-B205 themselves, the following popular claims are unverified against Canon sources and are not used anywhere in this guide: any per-code fault distinction among the five numbers; any assignment of specific voltages, boards or sensors to individual codes; any reset procedure beyond Canon USA's manual power reset; and any claim that a B20x code can be cleared permanently by cartridge substitution on FINE-cartridge models (plausible mechanically, since the head is part of the cartridge there — but Canon does not publish it as this family's fix, and it is presented on this site, if at all, only as that reasoning, never as Canon's procedure). What is verified is the family's spine: the MX490 wording, the G2010 listing, the B203 article's reset and verdict, and B200's manual definition behind them.

Key takeaways

Canon documents B201-B205 as one family: the MX490 manual gives them a single sentence ('contact the service center'), and Canon USA's B203 article gives them a single procedure and verdict — distrust any table that assigns each number its own fault.
Run the B203 power reset exactly once (off, unplug, wait at least 2 minutes, replug, on) and read it as a test: if the code reappears, Canon's conclusion is already written — print head hardware likely failed, printer needs service.
Before unplugging an MX fax model for any B20x code, check for faxes stored in memory — Canon warns that unplugging deletes them, and an error-stopped printer is exactly when faxes accumulate there.

Resetting the Canon printer

Canon documents one general power reset for its printers, in the form given in Canon USA's B203 article and repeated across its support-code procedures: turn the printer off, unplug the power cord, wait at least two minutes, plug the cord back in, and turn the printer on. The LED-display manuals give the same motion in shorter form for undocumented errors (turn off, unplug, plug back in, turn on; if the error remains, contact the service centre). This reset clears transient internal states only — Canon's guidance is explicit for code families like B200-B207 that a code which reappears after the reset has given its verdict (there, likely print head hardware failure and service). Two standing cautions attach to the unplug step on Canon machines: on fax models (the MX line), unplugging deletes faxes stored in the printer's memory, so retrieve them first; and for imageRUNNER copiers, user power cycling is not an error clear at all — iR errors are cleared in service mode (COPIER > FUNCTION > CLEAR > ERR) by a technician after the fault is repaired, and repeated clearing of protection codes like E001 without repair defeats a safety function.

Frequently asked questions

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