Printer goes throught the motions of printing, but what comes out is a clean page - no ink

A technique to improve print quality is to try and clean the cartridge nozzles. You may clean the cartridge by following the steps given below:
1. Go to the "Lexmark solution center." This can be done by clicking on "Start," go to "Programs" and Lexmark printer group. Click on the "Lexmark Solution center." Next click on the "Maintenance" Tab.
2. Select "Clean and Fix Horizontal streaks." Click on "Print". This will produce a printed page.
The colors that you should see here are black, yellow, magenta (a reddish purple) and cyan (a dark sky blue). You should notice the diagonal lines above and below the solid horizontal lines. These diagonal lines should be solid from left to right with no gaps.
If there are gaps in the lines or the print diminishes across the page, you should run the "Clean Print Nozzle" page a couple more times to try and clear it up. If you still have gaps at the top and bottom, you should "wick" the cartridges by following the steps given below:
1. Please open the "Solution center" again and go to the "Maintenance" Tab.
2. Select "Install color/black cartridge" and remove the cartridge or cartridges from the printer.
3. Get a damp paper towel.
4. Set the ink cartridge right side up on the damp paper towel so that the ink nozzles are against the towel and hold the cartridge in this position for about 15 seconds.
5. Now wipe the print head (on the bottom where the ink comes out) across in one direction only (left to right) until it looks clean.
6. Next dab the cartridge on the towel to make sure that the ink is flowing.
7. Snap the cartridges back into the printer.
8. On your computer, select "Old Cartridge install."
9. Repeat the "Clean Nozzle Page" one more time. If this fails to address the problem the entire procedure may need repeating.

Good Luck!!!!

Like the above poster said. Clean your print head and check your ink if they are installed properly. If everything still fails. You can always try to hard reset your printer.

Have you tried changing the ink/toner?

I had the same problem with my DCP 165.It simply wouldnt print.The paper was coming out but it was Blank.I had changed all the cartridges so there was no obvious issue with the ink.Then I printed a test page.It printed all the colour blocks except the black.Then i found out from Brother website that it was a problem with cleaning and after seeral cleaning cycles the printer worked fine. STEPS 1>ink management 2>Cleaning 3>Black or colour 4>OK Repeat the above process several times and try printing after that...Hope it works

this clearly indicates that the printhead of your black cartridge is completely blocked and it needs internal cleaning which cannot be done by printers cleaning commands.the print head has to be removed from the printer and and then cleaned with isoprophyll and soft tissue very slowly and gently.if u dont have a technical idea taking it to the repair center is advisable.

hope this helps.....
thanks.

I have a lexmark x2740 printer and have recently replaced the ink cartridge with a genuine lexmark ink and now my printer wont print, it goes through the motions of printing but only a blank page comes out.

Mine wasn't printing at all, but now its printing color. I still don't know why it won't print black, but what I did was go into the control panel, I clicked on printers and faxes found the Z25 and right clicked it. I then clicked on properties, I clicked on the advanced tab, went down to the bottom of that section and clicked printing defaults, that opened the window for the properties for the printer. Once there I clicked on options in the top right corner and clicked on Lexmark Z25-Z35 Solution Center. On the maintenance tab I clicked "Clean to fix horizontal streaks", it takes to you a pop-up that says "Clean and Test Nozzles" a page will start printing to show if you have broken lines or unbroken lines when you print, either way it should clear your nozzles enough for the ink to start coming out again. If you need to repeat it the "Clean and Test Nozzles" pop-up had a box that says "clean again. Once you are done with that you can close the pop-up. If that doesn't solve the problem there are other things to try on the maintenance page besides the "Clean to fix horizontal streaks". Hope it starts working for y'all too. I still have to figure out the black part.

Fix ink cartridge
I had same problem. I must have ran the clean cycle more than 30-50 times over a period of days. That never made any difference. I was about to toss the whole thing but figured I would try one more thing. If it didn't work I would be in no worse shape. Here is what I did.
Took an almost empty black cartridge and inject a lot of 100% Acetone to dilute ink. Left some black in it since I didn't want to think it was empty. Inserted this cartridge and ran the cleaning a few time. IT WORKED. I used my word processor program and filled a page with large bold font characters and printed a page or two. Each page cleared more nozzles. After doing this cleaning/printing a number of time, I put in the full good cartridge. Ran the cleaning a few time to eject any of the Acetone diluted ink. Ran the printed page a few time to remove more of the diluted ink.
Everything seems to work now.

I had the same issue when I replaced the printer and kept the old cartridges I had just purchased. The OK button I pressed was on the PRINTER not the PC. You dont say the model printer you have. Mine is an all-in-one J6480.

Use another new genuine (original brother) BK cart. Do the cleaning twice only for BK. Wait some time (4 hours). If the ink has dryed up, the cleaning ink will break up the dryed one. Do the cleaning again. If it doesnt work, please write again.