Can someone tell me if the ink cartridges may have leaked or something?

[Persimmons]

About a month ago, my printer started to only print in yellow and black. The more I print, the more thick the yellow looks on the test papers. Looking closer at the ink cartridges, I found ink smears on parts of my printer. I don't know if this is normal. Can someone tell me if this is normal? The first photo is outside the printer. The second photo is a close-up of what I think has gone wrong. 

Outside printer

Inside printer, next to black ink cartridge

 

Troubleshooting done so far: 

• Talked to the virtual assistant
• Printed status and quality reports: always yellow and black, occasionally green
• Aligned & clean my printer for several cycles (3 cleans at a time): same as quality reports
• Talked a customer service agent: could not solve
• Replaced Yellow and Cyan cartridges: nothing changed
• Went through the troubleshooting listed in this article about print quality issues for my printer
• Ran "HP Scan and Doctor" three times: new software was downloaded, but problem not fixed

[Echo_Lake · Accepted solution]

@Persimmons

Thank you for posting on HP Support Community.
 

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help,
I appreciate your efforts to try and resolve the issue. If you have already performed the steps from the document ink cartridge error: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04100778 and the issue persists, it could be a hardware failure. 

Please reach out to HP Support in your region regarding the service options for your printer. HP Support can be reached by clicking on the following link:www.hp.com/contacthp/      
      

Hope this helps!              
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!