Why won't my printer print black ink even though my ink levels are fine?
The printer is an HP Photosmart Plus B210 Series. My black ink is half full and it worked find a couple of days ago. Today I went to print an essay and it looked like the ink was running out. Then, on the next page, it completely stopped printing it…not even remnants or faded ink as it would if I was actually out of ink.
I’ve checked the levels, they’re fine. It’s not dried out. I know that my colored inks are on their last leg and when I tried to print something in color, it got that faded look I was expecting – so it’s not all the cartridges that aren’t working.
I’ve tried the “blank ink only” option to no avail. I’ve turned off and unplugged the printer – no luck. I tried printing from a different program and even copying a page – nothing. No ink is printing whatsoever. I’m not getting any error messages.
I tried to troubleshoot it on the HP website and it didn’t help at all. This paper is due tomorrow and I have nowhere else I can print it on time. Anyone have any ideas of what the problem might be?
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7 Answers
I fixed it! I’m sorry everyone – is there a way to delete this question? Mods?
If anyone is interested for future reference, I ran the “clean printhead” tool I hadn’t noticed before. Worked like a charm. I just hope this isn’t a sign of more trouble to come – this printer was pretty expensive and the warranty is out on it.
This is very interesting because I have a B209 and I had the exact same problem. Ink levels fine, black not printing. I tried the “clean printhead” as well and it didn’t work for me. What worked was not using the printer for a week and then using it again…back to normal. This is either a huge coincidence or a known problem with that line of printers…
Anyway, I know you answered your own question—I just had to bring that up.
@DominicX Yeah, after doing some research I found that a lot of the HP Photosmart printers had this issue. And, apparently, their customer service isn’t worth much.
I have an HP Deskjet D4360. I bought a 3-pack of genuine HP black ink from Costco. The first one I opened had dried ink in the jets. I needed to use rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to dissolve the ink. I must have lost 10% of the ink doing that. Now it works. What a pain.
Just a tip here. My mum has a twenty dollar printer and the ink is 50 bucks to replace. I believe it is a Kodak one.
After installing a Gig of damn drivers and bloatware the printer worked. Then she ran out of color ink and the whole thing shut down. Wouldn’t print black. Here is the best part. It refused to scan when it was out of ink.
Luckily The Gimp and OpenOffice avoided the limitations set by the drivers that Windows complies with.
It is a fucking joke.
You took my answer. Always periodically run a cleaning and alignment.
Where do I find that Cleaning and Alignment/“Clean Printhead” option? The same thing happened to me :( Thanks so much!
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