Black Ink shows up blotchy when printing

[Jmeyer180]

There seems to be a problem with my printer reading my black ink cartrige in my Deskjet 3450 All in one printer.  When I go to print, it only prints out a quarter of the page.  The quarter of a page that it prints, is blotchy and not all words are readable.  From what I can tell, the colored ink looks fine.  

Already tried:

1. Printing alignment page and aligning
2. printing safari webpage
3. Restarting printer

Does anyone have a solution?  It would be great to get this fixed for classes starting tomorrow.  Thanks in advance!

Joel

[Bob_Headrick]

The document here may help resolve black not printing properly on your Deskjet 3450 printer.

When the black only prints part of the page does the printer continue to go through the motions for the rest of the page but print blank?  If so the cartrdige is likely defective.  

If the printer prints part of the page, then stops printing and ejects the page is there any error message on the computer or blinking light on the printer?

[Jmeyer180]

I just tried to print another test page.  On my printer screen, it says "Black cartrige problem".  This is while it takes about 5 minutes to print (it prints blotchy words, stops printing anything for a few minutes, then spits the paper out with no ink). 

I find it very odd that I just bought new cartridges and the black one refuses to work. Is this a printer or cartridge problem?

[Bob_Headrick]

It sounds like an issue with the black cartridge.  The troubleshooting steps in the document here may help resolve the issue. Follow the instruction for the cartridge errors. 

Is this an HP cartridge or a reman/refill?  The latter have generally poor quality, see the study here for details:  http://www.buyerslab.com/products/samples/HP-Inkjet-Cartridges-vs-Refilled-Cartridges.pdf  The symptoms you describe would not be uncommon with a poor quality reman/refill product.