Please help me fix my printer
 

it's an HP officejet 4620. I know, it's old.... but it was working great and then...

I always use HP brand carts

I replaced the red because it ran out. All was well. Couple days later, black and yellow just stop printing. Both were low, but still operational. Until that moment. I've cleaned the printer heads a bajillion times with using the system. I've looked it up and did the flush with alcohol thing to clean them manually. I've gotten the yellow almost good again. I replaced the black cart because it did seem like that may be gone but there is nothing coming out of that.. It acknowledges cart is genuine and full. It makes like it's printing but the page comes out blank. I need black more than anything. please help :( This happened one before and beest researched and fixed it and I think i did all the same things but evidently not.

I just can't be dealing with buying a new printer now, financially or emotionally. Please just trust me on the latter rather than debate it.

Can anyone help?

thank you :)

ok I def fixed yellow. So I'm not entirely useless. So why is black not printing at all?

I'd remove the ink cartridge and inspect it to make sure all of the removable protective tab, that covers the ink portals, came off and nothing fell into the cartridge receptacle to block the ink flow.

Next I'd try a reset:

Those are both quick to try. If they don't work, then I'd go to HP diagnostics. Try the Virtual Agent first and then downloading the HP Print and Scan Doctor for Windows (that's what I have for my HP printer):

https://support.hp.com/us-en/topic/d...k-not-printing

I did all of those things, thanks. Virtual agent tried then offered to put me through to real agent ...but wanted serial number, told me it was out of warranty and didn't go further.

ha! I just noticed the link you posted comes up as already visited for me :) I feel justified, thank you. This is so bizarre. why did it just stop so suddenly? i am really beginning to hate HP

Can you return the ink cartridge as defective and get a replacement?

...I still went to it again and it told me the virtual agent was busy combating coronavirus (or something to that effect) :lol: well at least I got another laugh

nope. well I could try but I have tried before with really defective carts and they refuse to even replace them. Also, it bust before I put the new cart in, so I'm pretty sure that is not it. It's got to be something with the print head, I just can't figure out what...


I saw that in some printers you can remove the whole bank of print heads, but I can't see any way to do that on this one.

...although maybe I could try again, and just start coughing a little...

but I'm pretty darn certain it won't solve my problem which is what I really want. :/

You may want to have another look at the troubleshooting procedures. There are a couple of things that you haven't yet specifically mentioned:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product...ment/c03944809

I did do all of the above. with the old and new black carts.

The "Automatic Servicing Routine" was a huge fail, so I may revisit that. Because it told me there was a problem that it couldn't fix. Two problems, but it "fixed"one and was unable to fix the problem with the document stuck in the printer queue. I fixed that and can print things.... as long as I don't want any black in them

This doesn't help you, but in college I printed all my papers in blue ink for like a year because I couldn't afford to buy a new black cartridge. I'm sorry I don't have any useful advice to offer. :(

I had a printer waaaay back that unless you used it very frequently the print head (what the ink cartridge plugged into) would dry and be clogged w/dry ink.

I would take the print head out and soak the tippy tip part in alcohol, run the clean cartridge program a coupla times and it would work great til it dried out again.

This also doesn't help you. Sorries.

If your colors are coming through, you have it set to the color printing mode in printing options. Have you tried setting it to black and shades of grey only mode? Maybe even run a test program sheet in that mode.