A guy called me because when he printed something up he was getting blank pages. He called with this problem before and originally, it turned out he was out of ink. But he only recently got a new ink cartridge and it shouldn’t be empty yet.
The problem did turn out to be an empty cartridge, in a way. He has an HP printer (can’t remember the model number now). It takes two cartridges, colour and black. The colour one is empty and he only bought a black ink cartridge.
He usually only prints documents from his browser and doesn’t really need colour. But that was his problem. The documents he was printing contained some colour and was coming out blank on the paper.
I found a simple solution in the browser. He was using Chrome. When you print a document in Chrome, in the printer options, you can pick to print your document in color or black and white.
So I switched it to black and white. That solved the white page issue.
(Ctrl + P) starts the print process and most browsers seem to have a similar Color setting. Firefox calls it Color mode.
Some printers will not print at all if one cartridge is empty even if you have multiple cartridges. My Canon allows me to select the cartridge to use.
In my case, I type printers into the search bar, then click on Printers and Devices when it appears.
Click on the name of your printer, in my case “Canon MX490 series Printer”.
Then click on the “Manage” button…
…and then “Printing preferences”.
Then click on the “Maintenance” tab and then “Ink Cartridge Settings”
And there I can select either to use just the “Color” or “Black” or both “Black and Color”.
I have an HP DeskjetD1300 that doesn’t allow you to select cartridges but does allow you to print in “grayscale“.
With my Canon, I tried printing a text document with black letters with only the colour cartridge and the letters came out with a slightly gray tint to them compared to the only black printout. So you can print a slightly off-coloured black with only the colour cartridges depending on what your printer supports.
For more printer troubleshooting click here.
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Sorry for having to do this, but the problem is, YOU OWN A HP. Since they shut down their US facilities, Colorado Springs in my case, they have turned into a pile of &(&*(^! Their mechanical product is most likely still good, but they don’t know how to write the software to operate it and they were one of the first companies to eliminate anything resembling Customer Service. Don’t get me wrong they have some great ideas, like the payment plan to automatically send you a new ink cart when yours s getting low. ONLY, they forget to send it and you are two months out of ink before they pick up your phone call to hear you giving them a piece of your mind.
Thanks for the comment. My HP, I bought it at a yard sale and because it’s an old model, the ink is pretty cheap right now. I’m going to use it till it either breaks down or can no longer buy the ink.
Terry, I gave up having a colour printer years ago (those cartridges were draining money down the drain). Unless for printing pictures, which means you also need the proper paper, a black laser printer is ideal, Mindblower!
Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately, right now I do need the colour ink for various reasons.