Odd Lightroom problem while printing

I've been working with Lightroom lately to try it out and see how it works (had been using CS2). Everything was working fine. Exports and prints were fine that is **until** I started fiddling with the advanced printing functions for my Epson 2400 and Lightroom. Now its a mess. All my prints range for way too dark to horribly dark. I'm to the point where I think I'll just set everything to *newbie* settings because my results are unuseable.

My question is how can I be having good results with generic settings where non of my color management is setup but get such dark prints when I try using icc profiles, etc...? I thought maybe it was due to having color management in my printer setup and also in lightroom. But this hasn't been the case. I have alternated between either letting Lightroom control prints and disabling lightroom to let my printer manage colors.

Are you sure you're doing it correctly? Make sure color management is turned off in the printer driver software.
Link and a video

Thanks Rene,

Checked out the link but couldn't find an mp4 player that would work for me.

I'm still sort of confused. I've disabled my color management in my printer software and letting Lightroom handle things. My photos are much much better. But maybe still just slightly on the dark side. I've been trying different printer profiles and getting varying results. I finally settled on the best one. Could my dark prints could have been the result of Lightroom and my printer both trying to do color management at the same time?

Another point of my confusion is when I try to let my printer manage the colors vs. letting Lightroom do color management. My results are so different. I'm using my printers profiles. Seems like the results would be a lot more similar.

Printer profiles are printer, ink *and paper* specific.
Letting the printer manage colors might work okay if you're using papers supplied by the same company as the printer.

Another link on LR color management: Click

"Too dark" prints are often a result of the display being too bright...

I'm getting a very good softproof to print match using PSCS2 and my R2880.
I never use LR for printing, since I prefer to softproof.

What version LR and what OS? IIRC some people had problems with LR2.2 / CS4 and printing.