Printer Ink Cartridges & Print Quality

I was printing and things were  printing faded so I thought there was low ink levels. I checked the levels and they were not empty, but i thought maybe they had dried out and so I removed the color and black ink cartridge, as i had refills of authentic HP cartridges, I replaced the tri color, and then realized the black was the wrong # and went to put the old black back in until i could buy a refill. When i put it back in i recieved an error message that said the black ink cartridge must be replaced. I went and got the  HP 61 XL black ink cartridge, and installed it and the message still appeared. I went through all of the trouble shooting steps with the virtual agent including making sure it was the right cartridge, unplugging it, updating the firmware, cleaning the copper contact points and it is still stuck on that error message and won't even let me return to the home menu. I saw others on here that posted a similar situation, but haven't been able to find any helpful solutions. I spent $50 on the new ink cartridge and now i don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice?