Want to print only in black

Most likely you cannot. If you do not have any of the colour cartridges with ink in them, the print heads will dry out and when you want to print in colour you will not be able to print in colour.

use a GENUINE cartrige and check the cartridge expiration date

Your printer uses the following cartridges:

HP 74 - Black ink
HP 75 - Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow ink
HP 99 - Photo Black, Light Cyan, and Light Magenta

You need Photo Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, and Light Magenta to print photos. To accomplish this you install the HP 99 photo cartridge where your HP 74 black cartridge usually goes and you keep the HP 75 color cartridge where it's at. I don't know why your printer told you to remove both cartridges, then reinstall the HP 75 color cartridge.

Not knowing what sort of printer you have it's hard to pin-point exactly what the issue may be. Taking an educated guess I'm going to guess that you are using an inkjet of some sort. These printers will often use a combination of the cyan, magenta, and yellow inks to make black and shades of gray, and it is possible to get pink instead of gray if the cyan and and yellow are to low to provide a mix to produce gray. Try new ink cartridges to see if that makes any difference...some printers, like DesignJets use individual cartridges for each colour, and most small printers use a combination cartridget that contains cyan, magenta, and yellow ink in different reservoirs in the same tank.

If you are using a printer that doesn't require both the colour cartridge and the black cartridge in to function, try pulling out the colour cartridge and printing in grayscale. Most printer drivers are designed to recognize the fact that the printer only has the black cartridge in it and will automatically make the necessary adjustments.

Hi,
If you go to your printer properties, there should be a setting whereby you have to select the option to "PRINT USING BLACK CARTRIDGE ONLY". Make sure this option is selected, otherwise your printer will use ALL colors even if you only print black.
Let me know if you need any further assistance.
Best wishes,
Graemevm

Hi I think I had a similar problem, I let the black and cyan run down really low. then it took a week to replace the cartridges. The result was no black and cyan. I put in new cartridges and of course no colour.

Solution: Take out the cartridge holder and take a cotton bud and soak all the ink pads in alcohol (no not beer)

I used clear alcolhol from the chemist, the reason for this is it dries out very well after the clean process with no contamination. Give the ink pads a good soak and rinse out in very hot but not boiling water and allow to dry. Then go through the deep clean process in 'printer maintenance'

You may have to do that several time but be patient and it should clear out and start to print again.

MCL

Sorry to say this, I had a Canon Pixma and it wouldn't print unless you replaced empty cartridge, although I did have some success for a while longer by pressing OK button?

When you print, in the printing window, click properties, then click advanced. Most times you can select to print using black cartridge only. Unfortunately you will need to replace to get the printer working. If you need further assistance let me know.
Thank you,
Lee

Some of Epson's cartridges went bad that way. It may be a bad cartridge. Get a new one, pull that one out and see what happens. If it works, call Epson for a refund. They had a class action suit for that type of thing, they lost and paid off. I would think they will help you right away.
C

You have to replace the cyan cart with a new one. error should disappear.

Even though you didnt use cyan the machine needs some ink to keep the noozles wet. Therefore machine does some automatic cleaning cycles which consumes some ink.

BTW: did you program the date/hour settings? Do so and do NOT disconnect machine from constant power, because data will be deleted. machine will do its cleaning cycles about every 2 weeks. otherwise it will do the cleaning everytime its powered up!