HP Deskjet 3820 - not printing black...

[bertles86]

Hi!

I have a Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 3820 running on Windows XP SP3 connected via USB.

It has both colour and black cartridges installed, and over 75% full.

It prints a test page fine.

I have cleaned the print heads and calibrated it using the printer assisstant.

Whenever I try to print in grayscale, all I get is a few streaky horizontal black lines at the top and nothing for the rest of the page (if printing an entire page of black text).

What is the problem?

 

[gbaughma]

Does the test page print the black OK?

Is it just one program that you're having issues with?

What if you print from, say, notepad?

Or directly from a command prompt?



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[bertles86]

I print the test page, and for a split second a window pops up saying "Problem with the black ink cartridge" then the page prints and a butterfly and the word 'hp deskjet' but all in colours no black. I then did a test page using this:

Link

And the yellow bar is virtually white with a few faint yellow lines. Black is a streaky black/purple mix, red is pink, green is turquoise...pretty much f**ked

Dodgy carts you reckon? They don't look like official ones!

 

[bertles86]

I just took out both carts, the colour one seems fine and has the HP label on it. The black has no label on it, the copper connectors at the back have a small puncture centrally in them. Also the cradle for the colour cart has a silver metal bar which is sprung and that is not in the cradle for the black cart! Have I got a big problem here?

 

[bertles86]

Any help at all would be great folks.