To lessen a recovery operation as much as possible even if an ink tank is detached and attached during the maintenance of a printing head in an inkjet printer in which a user can freely detach and attach the ink tank.

The ink tank is connected to the printing head with an ink feeding tube, and an ink tank mounting section includes an ink tank cover which can be regularly opened and closed. When the ink tank cover is opened during the maintenance of the printing head, if there is a possibility of some fault arising at the time of the ink tank being extracted during the operation, the maintenance operation is halted or interrupted according to the processing of the maintenance operation. Although the processing is continued or the slight recovery is performed when the ink tank cover is closed within a predetermined time, in the case of exceeding the predetermined time the operation is interrupted and the recovery is performed. In case there is not any problem even if the ink tank is extracted during a cleaning operation, the operation is continued without interruption.

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