Officejet 6600 refusing to print any black ink.

[sm2993]

My dad gave me this printer to use, we haven't used it previously for at minimum a year as he had gotten a new one. I went to use it and have spent 2 hours troubleshooting and trying to fix it. None of the guides or recommendations worked, and I do not have time to ship the thing out for repair.

The printer will not print any black ink. Period. Originally, there was cartridges about a third full for color and half full for black in the printer while it was not in use. My dad found another black ink cartridge to try since I only need it to print in black and white. Original cartridge: does not work. Will not print black ink after multiple cleanings, print checks, or even cleaning inside where the cartridge sits. Second cartridge: 2/3rds full. Same thing. Nothing. Bought a whole new set of cartridges, including color, and replaced everything. Nothing. No black ink. Beautiful color, but absolutely zero black ink.

I've tried the step-by-step that HP provides, so don't bother telling me to go down that checklist, I already had the virtual chat bot tell me to do that after already attempting the steps several times. I tried the chat bot, and it literally only made me want to throw my computer (yes, telling me to contact support and just restarting a new chat bot interaction is so helpful, thank you chat bot for that insightful advice). I do not have time to ship the printer out.

The only thing I can think of is the stupid printer has something wrong with the actual means of sending black ink to the inktips or whatever they're called. I couldn't see any damage and it's all clean, not even any dust, and before we temporarily retired it, the printer worked just fine. We just got a new fancier one and set this one aside. I tried messing with settings and cleaning the inktips and running all the printer tests I could think of. Sometimes I'd get the "printer or ink error please turn on and off" message, but usually it would just spit out a piece of paper with color but no black ink. I've tried turning it on and off, turning it off then unplugging and replugging it, swapping the ink cartridges of varying ages in and out, switching tables and outlets, and at this point nothing has worked. None of the forum posts are even remotely helpful because all the answers are "do these same steps". Unless you have a specific trick or an actual solution, don't give me those steps. I will just ignore them since I've been doing them for hours in varying orders and, as previously stated, they don't do anything or change it.

This is why if I had the choice, I'd just use an actual printing press. Setting type by hand and printing slow is so much easier and less painful than dealing with this stupid printer.