Epson Photo 1280 and Color 600 Won't Print Black in XP

[drhart]

Replaced an old Win98 machine with a new (Dell 2300) XP Pro machine. HP scanner(USB) and HP laserjet (1000, on USB) installed and functioned fine from XP's native driver database.

Epson Stylus Photo 1280 (USB) and (old) Epson Stylus Color 600 (Parallel Port LPT1) also installed fine, but will only print in from the color cartridge, no black ink. I've done the following so far:

1. downloaded new drivers (both Win2K and XP) from epson
2. set each printer to B/W only (which results in a blank page being printed)
3. replaced the black ink cartridges
4. even tried Stylus Photo 1270 driver from epson site (which results in the 1280 behaving the same way, only utilizing the color cartridge).

Has anybody encountered this? Your help is appreciated!

-Tim

 

[gargouille]

What app is generating the print files or do they all do this?
What happens when you do the color tests with the printer diagnostics or test page?