Ink Cartridge The cyan ink wont print, it is half full and I have cleaned the heads about six times bit still no cyan ink prints, every other colour is fine. How do i take out the cartridge o clean the head, I normally follow the instruction to change an empt cartridge but I do not know how to take out a half full cartridge.

My HP printer has a cleaning programme and a cartridge priming programme. I had trouble with my colour cartridge, in particular the cyan. The cleaning cycle never worked but the priming programme worked a couple of times but whenever the printer was left idle for a while the colour would not print.

I took the cartridge to a refill shop and the guy emptied the ink and steamed out the cartridge and print head and refilled it and then it did work for a time.

A new cartridge is expensive and so these days I just use it for printing black...

I think there must be something strange or different about the cyan ink. Sometime in the future I am going to try steaming again only this time with a deal more pressure than the guy at the refill shop used.
I am sure it will be kill or cure...


Deleting the printer and reinstalling it should be the next step to try. Sometimes my printer goes a bit eccentric or gets in a bad mood if I try and pause or cancel printing from the printer menu. I have learned not to do that with any HP printer. Once it gets in a bad mood the only cure is to disconnect it from the mains and leave it for half an hour before plugging in again.
My printer, incidentally, is a Deskjet 96 Cxi professional machine. I like it because it prints both sides of the paper and it cost me nothing.

have you tried to use the same printer with another computer

Try cleaning nozzle with dry paper towel, cartridge should leave 3 streaks: Yellow, Cyan, Magenta.
If colours on paper seams to be tinted or mixed the cartridge needs to be reclamated, there is no other solution.
If there is an lack of one or more colours try to wipe nozzle with wetted paper towel in window cleaner. After few wipes, 3 colours sholud apper

Sorry for the delay in my answer. No you do not need to remove the ink from the cartridge itself. Soak remove the cartridge and soak it as is. You will get a huge colour change in the water but it will not use any more than 0.1ml of ink
regards GM

> replaced the print head

Did you replace the tri-colour ink-cartridge, or did you replace the print-head mechanism?

Are you sure that the CYAN part of the ink-cartridge is not empty?

Try printing a light stripes test page (Troubleshooting, print quality problems, troubleshooting print quality page).

If you do not appear to have many missing jets but the colours are all just wrong it may be that the ink has gone stale. Run a couple of head cleans and you should see the colours start to improve. If it is getting better, all you can do is keep running head cleans until you have replenished all the ink in the printhead well.
This problem is common in situations where a lot of black and white printing is done, with very little colour.
Alternatively, it could be that your wiper/cleaning blade is not cleaning the head properly and is smearing the different coloured inks across the head, or possibly that your printhead is leaking colours but I think the first solution should solve your problem.
Hope this helps.

remove the cartriadge clean the head and try again

your yellow colour is used mostly please refil your colour cartridge or change your colour cartridge.

I think the problm lies between the ink tank and the printhead. When this passage runs dry, sometimes it takes time for the ink to fill this passage again. Try printing again after a day or two.

Hello, this is Harry from www.BusinessSpread.co.uk.
We had the exact same problem when printing, we used 3 different 78 colour ink cartages and they all said 100% full but did not work. We then had a look at the dates on the box and they were all expired so when buying ink from anywhere even PC world or Curry’s always look at the expiry date.
Today I went to PC world and purchased a new 78 ink which said expires July 2011 and it works perfectly fine.
Regards,
Businessspread.co.uk