Gaps in Black Printing--Nice even gaps 5mm wide followed by 1cm of good black printing repeated

[Campini82]

After storing this printer away (safely) for a few years, I've taken it back out and connected it up to my new laptop. The cartridges are low so I installed a new black cartridge only as I only print text/Word docs.

Having set the printer up using HP's online wizard and selecting it to only print in black I ran the test print and it will only print half of the black text lines about every 3.5cm. 

Print Quality Diagnostic printout shows nice even gaps in the Black vertical test bars (nice neat horizontal white stripes through the vertical black bars). White Gaps are 5mm wide, black section printing correctly 1CM wide. Pattern is repeated like zebra stripes but just in the Black section of the Print Quality Diagnostic. Tried all HP online diagnostics. Replaced Black Cartridge. Restored defaults. Plugged and unplugged. Removed and replaced black cartridge. Nothing worked.

I read online that I should try photocopying something to see if it happens with copying also and the same thing has happened (see attached picture).

This printer has not gotten a lot of use. Very disappointing  that it has this problem. Am I doing something wrong?

[8lives]

Did you try cleaning the printhead?

Click here for more info.

[Campini82]

Thanks for replying. I didn’t try that although I did find a solution. When printing I was selecting ‘print in grey scale’ and then selecting ‘black ink only’. I found that if I didn’t switch to black ink only (I think it says ‘high quality’?) then it prints fine. A bit odd but at least it’s printing now.

That said, I’m now finding that pdf documents will print fine and in their entirety but the document will sit in the print queue afterwards as if it hasn’t finished and stop the next document from printing. I can’t cancel the job from the print queue and have to use HP’s print/scan doctor to clear the queue. It’s really annoying!

Any help appreciated!

[8lives]

Have you tried running a sfc /scannow from a command prompt with admin permission?