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General discussion

Having trouble printing

by lkeyes01 Oct 26, 2008 4:42AM PDT

I have an HP psc 2110 printer that I can only print from if I install both a black and a color cartridge. The problem is, I don't do a lot of printing, mostly only documents and buying and installing a colored cartridge is a waste of money because it ends up drying out in the printer. I recently bought 2 new black cartridges and installed only 1 black cartridge...NO COLORED CARTRIDGE. It worked fine with just the black ink cartridge installed until I turned it off and unplugged it. After I replugged it in it won't print, so I contacted HP for help. Unfortunately, HP was no help, after over an hour of live chatting with them they informed me that I must install a color cartridge along with the black cartridge in oder for the printer to work when using the Vista OS. It appears that their built in software only supports having both cartridges. Also, they are working on an updated fully functional software for this printer that will be released as soon as possible, meanwhile my options are to buy the color cartridge which is too expensive to buy, just to waste or they offered me an upgraded printer for $134.99.

Ok now, my questions are...Since it worked with only a black cartridge installed while using Vista before, shouldn't it work now? Does anyone know of a way to get around buying a new printer or colored ink cartridge? Does the printer just need to see a cartridge in the colored cartridge slot? Will the black cartridge (I already ) work in the colored slot?

Please help if you can, I really can't afford either option provided by Hp, who by the way has lost favor with me and I will never purchase from them again...lkeyes01

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3 Posts
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Printing black only
by Phil Crase Oct 28, 2008 1:07AM PDT

Go into the printer software, find printers in control panel click on icon. There should be an HP printer assistant installed, in the assistant there should be options. You can set it to print black only from there. Generally for printers to function you need to have ALL cartridges installed, running just one cartridge in a two cartridge system confuses everything and you may wind up re installing the software to make it function properly. Good luck.

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Options
by Willy Oct 28, 2008 2:10AM PDT

You have to have the all carts installed as its seen as an error otherwise. That's just the way it is. Now, if thew optional setting provide for a "monochrome" usage, set it and forget about, thus only black output. Provided it so optional, otherwise, you're stuck. If truly all you ever do is print black, then look into a B&W laser printer as that will overall be cheaper to run and be very good on output speed and quality. If you brought this ptr. because it was cheap or on sale, then consider you made a bad decision and doing the above will correct for it. However, many newer ink cart ptrs. don't provide for black only output unless they are so optioned. Check the support website for details on any possible setting that may help for final quest. FYI, I don't know of any gimmick that defeats the color output.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Mono printer
by Phil Crase Oct 28, 2008 11:03PM PDT

I agree with Willy, if you do ONLY black printing, get a cheap mono Laser printer, Brother makes several for 100.00 or less and they work quite well.

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