HP Officejet 6970 prints blanks; Officejet 6700 successful.

[billreith]

I have two printers.  Recently my Officejet Pro 6970 has begun to print blanks when invoked from either of two Windows 10 laptops. When invoked, it sounds as if it is printing, even going so far as to produce a page, then suck in back in for 'printing' on the other side, but only a blank sheet is produced.  Tried printing in Word, Excel, and Notepad; same result. 

Selected Print Test Page from my PC's Settings, got a page with "Windows Printer Test Page" in light blue font and a printer icon at the top, nothing else. After this test, tried again to print (from Excel); same original results.  When I direct output to my other printer,  Officejet 6700, print occurs normally.

Tried completely shutting down printer and this laptop and then restarting; same failure.  Tried pulling power from printer (unplugged it for 30 seconds) and then restarted it, same failure. Tried printing from a different laptop; same failure.

Any research or debugging thoughts would be appreciated.

[billreith]

Update: I was able to print from a web page.  Regular printing, however, still produces a blank page.

[billreith]

Update 2: The HP SMART software tells me that the black ink cartridge is about 80% full, and the other 3 are between 25% and 50% full. Experiments show that I can print in colors other than black, which leads me to think that there is something wrong with that cartridge.  I did try saying 'print in greyscale', thinking that this would cause it to emulate black by mixing the yellow, cyan, and magenta cartridges, but that did not work.  I therefore am going to buy a black cartridge, and we'll see what happens.

[billreith · Accepted solution]

Final Update:  Well, this was good news for Amazon, and good news for me.  But not for the same reason.

It was good news for Amazon because I ordered a new black cartridge.  Jeff Bezos is now $30+ bucks richer.  Woot!

And it was good for me, because I came across several videos regarding cleaning the cartridge.  One said to poke in the vent - I hope that was the vent that I was poking -- but that did nothing.  One said to make a bath about 50/50 hot water and isopropyl alcohol, deep enough to come about halfway up the side of the cartridge, let it sit for several minutes, then take it out, dab it dry, and try it.  I haven't the guts for that. 

But then I found one that said that the metallic strip on the bottom of the cartridge can get dirty, so just wipe it clean with a soft cloth and isopropyl alcohol, let it dry, and put the cartridge back.

I did.  And now the black cartridge works just fine.  WOOT!