What's going on with my printer?

**nav** · #1 03-03-2011, 04:38 AM

My printer is quite an old one a HP Deskjet 710, despite it's age it printed great but now it only prints red or black, all the files i send to it come out with red or pink depending on the colour like in a photocopier but word document files come out black. I've changed the ink cartridges but it still prints the same way. Does anyone know what to do?

**GreMir** · #2 03-03-2011, 05:12 AM

It sounds like your yellow and blue print heads are clogged. Did you try head cleaning? This option should be somewhere in the printing preferences under the maintenance tab.

**nav** · #3 03-04-2011, 04:38 AM

Thanks but there isn't any maintenance tab, any manual way?

**GreMir** · #4 03-04-2011, 05:12 AM

Sorry, that's how it is set up in my Epson. Maybe somebody who owns an HP will be able to help then...

**peter taft** · #5 03-04-2011, 05:37 AM

You could try here.... Hope it helps.

https://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=59307&lang=en

**Inventor** · #6 03-04-2011, 05:50 AM

You could try a damp coffee filter. Do not scrape or rub, but rather dab the print head. The water on the coffee filter will soften any clogs and suck the blockages out of the printheads. It may take a bit if the ink is dried, Coffee filters are lint free and act as a wick. This technique is used on the higher end wide format ink jets. Worth a try before buying new print heads.

**nav** · #7 03-04-2011, 09:28 AM

Still nothing

**codex34** · #8 03-04-2011, 06:45 PM

Any dried ink on the contact pins?
Used to have HP but dumped it because of these types of cartridge issues and the price of ink. The internal pressure regulator seemed to be the biggest problem, either not enough pressure or too much and ink went everywhere.
My dad used to use osmosis to tease the ink out, sounds stupid but it did work sometimes, you put the cartridge on a flattened wet rolled up tissue and move the cartridge along a bit every so often (when you remember) until you get 3 nice blobs of colour. Try it, if that fails it's probably the pin connectors to the cartridge, never tried fixing those.

**nav** · #9 03-06-2011, 08:23 AM

I've done all of those but nothing both green and red come out on the paper but it still prints red only,I think I'll just get more ink.

**doctormax** · #10 03-06-2011, 09:18 AM

how about try and do a print of some word document in just yellow then blue and so on that be a way of finding out is it the ink for them colours blocked. sometimes that even gets rid of the blockage in them. acutally don't need to do a full page in them just a few lines in all the colours. that is just like doing a check on the colours that epsom has