901XL cartridge generates ghost printings

[BerndDE]

Hello HP community,

end of July 2020 I bought a combi package of 901XL and 901 color printing heads in the HP-Store. When I started using the color cartridge, all was ok. But after I installed the black 901XL head, I got a blue shadow below black letters. The prinitng is ok, when I do a black and white copy. When I do a color copy it looks blurred. All printings from a computer are blurred. It doesn't matter if it is a PDF, Word-Document or anything else. It seems, that the printer uses blue ink to make black letteres darker, even if I only have black letters in a document. The computer prints are only ok, if I tell the driver to use only the black head. On the other hand, if I remove the black head, the color copy and computer prints are ok. But because black is mixed from the color ink, it is not so dark. After a lot of tests, I found out, that the black head prints a little bit higher than the color head. I got now error messages. I did the following things, but nothing helped:

• Head adjustment
• Normal an intensive cleaning of both heads
• Cleaning paper transport
• Fresh installation of the driver on a newely bought laptop under win 10 Pro 64bit
• Printing a "Print Quality Diagnostic Report" => looks ok, but the bar of the black ink level is printed higher than the one for the color level. And there is a small white line between the big black bar and the color ones at the top of the page.
• Copying this report black and white
• Copying this report in color with black head => blurred
• Copying this report in color with the black head removed => ok
• Comparing these copies and printout => black is printed a little bit to high
• Checking for new driver
• Checking for new firmware

I think that the nozzles are not well positioned in the 901XL black head. They are so fare away from normal, that the head adjustment can't fix it. I think this is a warranty issue, but I can't find a way to contact HP. The only way I found is this community forum. I hope that HP reads this and can help me.

Regards, Bernd

[TEJ1602]

@BerndDE, Welcome to HP Support Community!

We shall escalate this issue to the concerned team.

Please look for a private message from me requesting additional information. Keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Community's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

Please click “Accepted Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution. Click the “Kudos/Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

[sccchubert101]

Did you happen to get his resolved? I am having the same exact issue and it is very frustrating! I have been using the XL black for about 2 years now with no issues but I just bought a new XL black & color and went through every troubleshooting tip I could find with no result. I ended up returning the cartridges to the store and buying new ones and the same thing is happening!

[BerndDE]

No, I haven't solved it really. I tried another black cartridge, because I thought this cartridge caused the issue. But I got the same results as you. I still have ghost printings. The HP support told me, that the printer is the cause. There must be something wrong with the calibration. The printer is several years old and I decided it's not worth to fix it. So I ordered a new one. But at the moment the better ones are all sold out. I hope that the old one will last with my workarounds (remove black cartridge for color prints and adjusting the driver to use only the black cartridge for non color prints) as long as the new printer is deliverable again.