HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer - Horizontal Gaps in Printing

[dbl001]

Hi,

I have an HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer. 

The output has horizontal gaps (see attached photos).

I am running OS X 10.11.6, I have HP Utility 5.37.1 (1789)

I've powered off the printer and also done a factory reset.

I've tried cleaning the printer heads several times, however, it still outputs prints horizitonal banding gaps.

The HP Utility app fails when I try to initiate a level two cleaning.

The HP utility app. allows me to initiate a head alignment,  it prints an alignment page but then never 

asks me any questions about the output.

[Valsimot]

Replace black ink cartridge and print will be fine.

[dbl001]

The black ink cartridge is only 2-3 months old.

Do you think that it's bad?

1. Why doesn't the HP Print Utility allow me to initiate level 2 printer head cleaning?

2. Why doesn't the HP Print Utility walk me throught the Q+A on printer head alignment.

Something else must be wrong with the printer.

[Valsimot]

It's black ink cartridge, replace it and you should be fine.

[dbl001]

I changed the font color of my test print file to blue and it printed without any horizontal bands.

This supports your hypothesis.

[dbl001]

Thank You!  Replacing the black in cartridge solve the printing problem.

One additional question:

i. when I try to align the heads, it prints the pattern correctly, however, I am not prompted for input on the 8 patterns

that were output.  Any ideas?

[Valsimot]

You don't have to do anything regarding alignment beside printing an alignment page, the printer reads pattern with light and no user intervention is needed.

[dbl001]

Thanks!  I don't know what went wrong with the black ink cartridge.  I was only a few months old

and 80% full.  Is it best to leave the printer powered off when I'm not using it?  Does this preserve the ink cartridges?

[Valsimot · Accepted solution]

If you don't use it you can turn printer OFF, but leaving your printer unused for a longer period will make ink dry and you will have bad print quality.
If you haven't been using your printer for a while no matter black ink cartridge is 80% full it dried and you have poor print quality.