My printer will not print black. What can I do?

This printer has a separate cartridge for black and colour. When you print pictures, the printer uses all three colours mixed together to make black and does not use the black cartridge. Your black cartridge may be empty or the printhead may just be dried out. Try a head-clean from the maintenance menu and then print a nozzle test. If still no result then try replacing the black cartridge with a new one which has a new printhead as part of the cartridge.

Hi,
The ink cartridges that you replaced are brand new or refilled ?




Thanks
Proton

No. You need all the cartridges installed with functioning chips for your printer to work. The reason why you need all the colors when all you print is black is because a small amount of color prints when you print black. The manufacturers want to make up their R&D costs on the printers by selling lots of expensive ink.

If there are a compatiable black cartridge
replace this cartridge with your old empty cartridge and print a test page (don't mind about printing of black )
If speed is correct,
then replace the black cartridge with another new cartridge.
(some time compatiable black cartridge not work properly to flow ink)

I came up with a work around for printing black.

I changed the black cartridge with the color cartridge.
Then when I have a letter to print, I change change (or write) the letter text to yellow, red or blue.
Then I can print out a letter.

By printing the text as yellow, red or blue the cartridge will try to print with only 1 color, but will print out black.

If you do not use one of these primary printing colors the out put will be unusable.

I can not of course print out pictures.

Hi lilacky-

Here are some HP support links that might be helpful... and a couple questions to consider.

Q: Is your new cartridge one of these listed below?
"The HP Officejet 6100 series and HP Digital Copier Printer 410 products use the print cartridges listed below:
* HP 56 black print cartridge
* HP 57 tri-color print cartridge
* HP 58 photo cartridge (replaces the HP 56 black print cartridge for six-ink photo printing)" info from: Installing a Print Cartridge
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00004340&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&rule=12548&product=79477 Is your new cartridge a refilled cartridge? Some times those have special challenges. Has your cartridge been sitting a while in the box, maybe in a warm spot? Some times even new cartridges dry out a little. Was your old cartridge low or completely gone? Just as a test, if you put it back in your printer does the old cartridge work? Any printer error messages? Can you print a test page or an alignment page for your black cartridge? These might be too many questions but here are some HP support links with some How To information for getting more answers. Please let me know if any of these are helpful. see also: Slow or No Response from Printer
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documentSubCategory?rule=11882&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=79477 -JW

hmmm...paperman..that's unusual to say the least..

you need to print only in black if that is all the ink you have, and also you need to remove the color cartridge as it still registers in the printer as able to be used, although it is empty or near so. Did you remove the tape over the print head fron the new ink cartridge? Do a print head alignment, or use the toolbox icon to tell the printer that you just replaced the cartridge. Some HP models chip the ink cartridges so even a refill wont register as a full tank and the printer wont print. chip needs to be reset (difficult) or just replaced with a new cartridge.

First... check to make sure you removed the yellow tab from the new print cartridge

put the ink cartridge back into the printer

click Start
click Control Panel
open Printers and Faxes
click (or double click to open) your printer icon
click on Printer menu
click on cancel all documents

Then try printing again.
If this does not work, look in the manual that came with the printer and check out the troubleshooting section.

Machine needs both cartridges working to work