Printer Problem Please Help!?

Question

Okay My Grandfather tried to print something a while back, and it only printed the borders (like if it were to print this page it would only print the top part Yahoo Answers etc, and anything in color) It seems that everything that is supposed to be black will not print. It will print the gray parts like ANSWERS at the top of this page. If he tries to print a letter....nothing. You can hear the printer working away, but page comes out blank. I hope that makes sense. It also prints a test page just fine, but then again I'm not sure exactly what the test page has on it and it might be skipping some black parts but there is some gray lettering.

So he went out and bought a new printer, installed it and everything and same thing...only prints what I mentioned above. So it's not the actual printer.

We have changed the ink cartridges a gazillion times so it's not that.

If you know the answer to this, will you please give detailed information?

Thank You!!!

Answer 1

A little hard to diagnose without more info but...did he buy the same printer as the first one? If so, did he install the software again or just plugged it in and expected it to work. Because it sounds like the printer driver (the software) isnt installed properly or got corrupted. But if the second printer is different than the first and he installed the software, then that's not it. Could it be the USB cable? I never heard of it blocking just the black print.

What models are the 2 printers?

Answer 2

The cable can't tell the difference between color and black - it's a one-signal cable.

Unless you have a *VERY* strange (like in "the supernatural") situation - one printer went bad and the new printer had a factory defect causing exactly the same problem - I'd guess at a driver problem.

But first try printing something in Notepad, or some other program.  (I doubt it's the program you're using to print, but I've seen stranger things.  Like a database program that crashed if you entered "avacado" as a color for an item in inventory.)

If that doesn't fix it (if it does, reinstall the program that doesn't print), delete all your printers, then add a new printer and install the old one from scratch.