Both cartridges have ink, but black is printing only outlines.

[Dark_Penguin]

I'm having an issue with my HP  Envy 7640 All-In-One, which just seems to have appeared out of nowhere.  I don't use the printer very often, and so I can't think of anything I did or any random event that would have caused it, except that I recently replaced the ink cartridges.  Obviously I've done that many times considering how old the printer is.   On the other hand, I can't remember if I have printed anything successfully since I changed the cartridges, which just goes to show how little I use the printer.

The black cartridge is printing only in outlines.  If I run the utility to clean the cartridges, the printout shows the three vertical oblong shapes for the three primary colors, but where there's supposed to be one for the black cartridge, there's just a thinly outlined blank rectangle.  The color rectangles also have the thin black outline as usual.

Usually black text won't print at all, but sometimes it does print faint characters which, on closer inspection, turn out to be tiny "hollow" letters, again with the character outlines only, as shown in this Flickr album of two images:

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCbHWQ

What could be wrong?

[ferRX]

Hi @Dark_Penguin 

1.  If you have not used the printer for a long time, then probably the ink cartridges are dry

and needs to be cleaned.

2. The test page when you run utility to clean cartridges should look like the next one:

• 

3.  Please follow steps from the next video to clean cartridges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIIBzUeZ2K4&ab_channel=TricksTipsFix

* Click YES   to say thank you, 

* Click Accepted Solution when question is answered.

Best regards,

ferRX.

[Dark_Penguin]

You're sure about that first image?  That is exactly what I see now. 

 In the first rectangle, I thought there was supposed to be a greyscale "spectrum" from light gray to black, similar to the other colors.   I'm probably misremembering , though.  

I'll follow the steps in the video and see what happens.

[ferRX]

Hi @Dark_Penguin 

About the image is just an example, not an exact image. 😉

Just follow steps and see what is going on.

* Click YES   to say thank you, 

* Click Accepted Solution when question is answered.

Best regards,

ferRX.