Ip3500 4 times orange light blinking. magenta ink is out but i only need to print black and white. what do i do?

SOURCE: Orange light blinking

Hey guys, I finally brought my ip4500, not ip4300 1month ago, and am having the same problem. I experimented with the printer inks. And finally i have fixed this problem. I suspect it may work for ip4300, or other similar pixmas as well. Please follow at your own risk.


Scenario:
The printer error led flashes 15 times. And, The ink tank lights are flashing endlessly, or does not light up at all. If the ink light is off, it does not mean that the chip is corrupt.... Do not replace it, like i have. lol.

Problem: one or more of the inktank chips are corrupt. If at least one cartridge is corrupt, the printer will not work. Must purchase corrupted ink cartridge, or call canon for replacement.

Solution: Instead of buying a complete set of ink, find out which ink cartridge is corrupt, and needs replacing:

1.put all ink tank into the printer without the chip. close printer cover. computer should alert that "the following ink tank cannot be recognised. Printing cannot be executed because the ink tank...." You should see a picture of the ink in the alert box.
The picture in the warning box shows that the black, black. yellow, magenta, cyan are not inserted.

2.Starting with the blue ink, remove blue ink from the printer, reinsert chip into ink tank, then put the ink tank back into the printer. Close Printer cover. Notice that this time, if the ink chip isn't faulty, computer alerts that only black, black, yellow, magenta are not inserted into your printer.
If it is faulty, then you see another alert box, about unrecognized ink - if so go to step 4.


To test if the chips on the other ink cartridges(tanks) are faulty:

3. Repeat step 2, with the rest of the ink tanks. from right to left(blue, magenta, yellow, pgiblack, black)
4. Purchase corrupt ink tank. or call Canon for a replacement.


lemme know if this helps you.