Dell 1710 black marks printing down the sides

If you are seeing vertical streaks/black lines your primary corona wire is dirty and or the fax scanner may be dirty.
1)To clean the corona wire you take the drum unit and toner cartridge and place it on disposable paper to avoid spilling.
2) Clean the primary corona wire inside the drum unit by sliding the blue tab from right to left several times.
3) Return the blue tab and snap it into the home position.
4) Reinstall the drum unit and toner cartridge.
5) Close the front cover.
Caution: if you do not return the blue tab to the home position it may repeat the black lines.

Yourprinter ink has spiltonto the main ICU and needs to cleaned thoroughly. This is a job for a technician. The ink is all over the roller. It will only get worse. It now needs a techy to cleanproperly.

You are right the drum needs to be replaced. the coating wears down and starts making marks I sell them for 55.00 complete or just the drum for 22.00 It's easy to install a new drum with a screw driver and a pair of needle nose pliers. steven 818-888-0006

It might be a dirty led assembly. The leds hang down from the top when it is opened.

This is a usual problem whit this model of printer, i had been thru this three times already.
In my case, the printer stops completely halfway printing and shows "Hardware error 502", i found that is because the optical sensor strip is dirty, first you should try to clean it with out removing it form the printer, to do this you should:

(The optical sensor strip its an nearly transparent plastic strip behind the print head, if you look closely it has very thin lines painted on it, this is used by the printer to measure the movement of the print head)

1- Print something to case the hardware error and shut it down immediately
2- Disconect the printer
3- Lift the scaner part of if, as you do when adding ink.
4- Look where the print head (the ink cartiges) is, this is where the stain is
5- Get the print head out of the way (just slide it left or right)
5- Use a soft cloth with little water to try to clean it, if it doesn't work try isoplopile alcohol because sometimes the stain is ink and is very hard to remove
6- Try print again and repeat as necesary

if you can't clean it this way you must remove the strip and clean it.

(You must have plenty of time and patience to try this, or you can dissasembly the printer entirely if you want to re lubricate or something)

1- Move the printer head all the way left, and with some pointy object pull the metallic wire holding the the strip at the right edge (flashlight very usefull), it's marked with and "D", remember that.

2- Move the printer head to the right and remove the plastic strip (this side is very easy), it's marked with an inverted "F" (it's on the other side) and an arrow indicating the up direction

3- Inspect how dirty is the strip and clean it the way you want (not so aggresively, the strip hasn't the fault)

4- Put again the left side of the strip and make it pass behind the print head

5- Move the print head to the left

6- Put the right side of the strip whatever you can, this is a very tedious process because the reduced space available, remember to keep the left side in place, because it's impossible to put the right side first.

7- Re connect and power on your printer, if it immediately gives hardware error 502, the strip is misplaced, move it a little up, down, backward an forward trying to get in place and try again, or consult the respective solution en this website.

8- If you can turn on the printer it should print now, try it, if it works, Congrats!

Sorry for my bad english

depending on what the lines look like it could be the charge roller or transfer roller.
A defect on the charge roll appears as black areas on the front of the test page, and as light gray areas on the test page.
A defect on the PC drum of the toner cartridge appears as white areas on a dark, full–coverage test print and as black areas on the "text only" test page.
I have also seen a line with a 'ridge' on the paper. This will appear almost like an embossed line. This was caused by the fuser roller being scored by debris.

the waste ink pads are full ..when the black line appears it is an indicator that the waste ink pads are full it is usualy because the printer has reached its life expectancy the solution is either buy a new printer or pay a tech about 170 dollars to repair it

problem is when the printer does a head clean dumps large amount of black ink on to rollers. Replacement head is almost £100 and not certain to fix fault

If that is the only light:
Remove the toner cartridge and firmly shake it from side-to-side and front-to-back several to use the
remaining toner, and then reinsert it and continue printing. Repeat this procedure multiple times until
the print remains faded. When the print remains faded, replace the toner cartridge

If not let me know.

Swap in another cartridge and see if it fixes the problem.