HP Officejet 6500 E709n printer - black ink not printing

[Bob_Headrick]

---

@elktonbrant wrote:

Add me in on the conversation on the 6500 e709 and black ink issues. 

I'm running Windows 7, 64-bit with service pack 1 on a Lenovo purchased 9 months ago.

I had to replace an ink cartridge this evening as a normal part of the office life cycle.  It worked for about 5 pages then disappeared.  I have run 3 cleaning cycles and a hard shutdown as suggested above. [snip]

---

If the first few pages were OK then the ink stopped I would suggest the following:  first check the ink cartridge vents are properly cleared as shown in Solution 2 here.  If the vents were OK and running the cleaning cycles did not help then try soaking the printhead as shown in this post.

[EmilyGud]

Husband did hard reset, black ink worked perfect for first page by third was streaking like it was running out yet its a new cartridge.

[bmongilio]

So here's something interesting...

I downloaded and ran HP Printer Hardware Diagnostic Utility. Going throught the Wizard, I prrinted the General Purpose Test-Print Evaluation page - it printed all colors, including black! I also made both a color and black and white copy of the page successfully.

Printer then launched into Alignment, which failed and I still cannot seem to print black!!

This set of symptoms would seem to suggest a software problem, not a printhead or cartridge problem, unless the black printing was done through the color cartridges.

Thoughts??

[bmongilio]

So now it's getting weirder...

Selected printer from Windows and printed Test Page, which printed successfully including black. As soon as Test Page was done, it started Aligning Cartridges, first telling me it needed me load paper, even when tray had paper. Alignment did not print black and failed. Hmmm...

[elktonbrant]

Bob,

Thanks for all of your help.  I tried cleaning the head 3 times over 3 days... and no success.  My office supply store had a good special on the 8600 Premium, and I hope this will be a better printer for our small office (which will be used in tandem with a laser printer.  The 6500's in the floor awaiting its final trip to a proper recycling facility.  I think the 8600 premium will be a more durable printer given the number of copies we print/copy in a week.

[dpic44]

I've felt that this is a software issue almost from the beginning.  Either a Windows update has corrupted the printer colors or the latest HP update is corrupt.  Can something in the softeare be changing the letters from black to white?  How do we get the attention of HP tech support?

[Audiohead]

This sucks!!  My 6500 E709n is now exhibiting this exact behavior... hard reset not working... no black ink at all - have tried 2 new ink cartridges...  this thing is about to become a boat anchor... 

I literally printed something at 9:30 this morning.. went to print something again at 10:45 and nada.. nothing.. zip - NO BLACK INK!  I have now wasted almost 45 minutes of my day mucking with this....

PLEASE HELP - this is crazy!!  I've never had an HP printer fail me (I've had 11 of them)...  and these 920XL cartridges are NOT CHEAP!! 

NOT HAPPY!!!!

[Kferry]

A couple of days ago my HP 6500 E709n quit printing black ink as well. It was out of the blue and was working fine prior to this. I changed the black print cartridge as well and it printed a few pages, but they had streaked lines throughout the documents. Then it quit printing black again, so I wasted the new print cartridge. I ended up having to buy a new printer and all new ink cartridges yesterday. It seems very odd to me that several people are experiencing the same problem with the same model of printer within a short period of time.

[Doctor_Dave]

I started having the same problem about a week ago. The black ink just quit printing one day. I changed the black ink cartridge, then changed the other cartridges - nothing. I then went through the aligning process, then the cleaning printhead process - nothing. I followed the HP process for taking the printhead out and cleaning it by hand - nothing. Then I followed the advice for soaking the prinhead until no ink came out, dried it carefully, replaced it and the cartridges - nothing. I bought a new HP priinthead, got it today, replaced the old printhead, replaced the cartridges. Now I get an "Ink Syste Failure" and it keeps telling me to turn the printer off and turn it on again. I've done the hard power reset a few times - Nothing.  I've tried the cartridge alignment and printhead cleaning from the HP utility menu - nothing, same failure. It just doesn't work.

So now I have this fairly expensive printer sitting here as so much junk with hundreds of dollars worth of worthless 920XL cartridges. I'm not a happy camper with HP right now! Don't waste the $50 on a new printhead - that doesn't solve the problem!

By the way, I'm on a Mac Pro, so it isn't a Windows driver problem. It's happening exactly the same on the Macs.

[dpic44]

Since we are experiencing the same problem on different operating systems, then it must be an HP software issue.  Does anyone recall updating the driver?  Mine is set to update automatically.  Is it possible that someone hacked HP and modified the driver?  Possibly a disgruntled employee?

I ended up  buying an EPSON  Workforce 645 and am very happy with it, but I still want to get this printer working again.  We need someone at HP to take notice and help us out with this.