MX920 won't print in black and white when color cartridges are empty

[talentetta]

For over a year at least, my color cartridges have been empty, and I haven't had a problem printing or copying in black and white until now. I have an error on the machine that says to replace the 3 color cartridges. I only need black, so how can I work around this error and get back to printing? Recently the lg black 255 was out of ink, but it was still printing fine. I replaced that cartridge with a generic refill, but that hasn't helped. I still get the picture showing arrows to the 3 color cartridges, which are empty. I never printed in color, and yet they all drained down, even though I had grayscale and draft selected.

I am running Windows 10 on a Lenovo Thinkpad.

[Klimko66]

This issue is ridiculous
I have all new colors but one because the store didn’t have it -and it still won’t print!
Very annoying, now I have to pause work and school because of this?????
I joined this forum because I am letting everyone know that Canon, never again.
You lost a customer.

[TanyaG]

Just joined to say that you lost a customer today over this issue. I should be preparing for a presentation tomorrow and instead I'm trying to figure out how to get my printer with two brand new black cartridges to print in black and white and it's certainly too late to go out a buy more ink (which would be an additional waste of time). 

[Danny]

Hi, Tanya!

Thanks for posting on our forum! This community is designed for your fellow Canon owners to help each other out with any problems they may encounter. If this is a time-sensitive matter, search our knowledge base or contact our US-based technical support team at http://canon.us/SupportCF

Thanks and have a great day!

[thesonofdarwin]

So this works for me everytime, but it does consume extra ink because it forces the printer to do its initial startup calibration/cleaning.

Send everything you want to print as Black & White prints to your print queue. You'll get the Canon printer app popup saying you are out of ink and refusing to print. Leave your prints spooled in your print queue. Go turn off the printer and turn it back on. After it finishes startup it will go ahead and print, bypassing this restriction. This only works for things that were in your queue at the time you turned off the printer. If you try to print anything else you'll have to restart the printer again.

Glad to see after all these years printers are still the most annoying appliance in the house. And that this is an intentional design "feature" makes it even more insulting.

[inyan78]

that's funny because if I use it to copy other physical documents it prints in black and white just fine

[chiphenry]

This single thing is going to stop me from buying Canon products in the future. This is a software issue and is deliberately designed to fail printing in Black and White if out of a color.

This is a very crappy situation. I want to print a tax form and since my magenta is out, you won't allow me to print a black and white form.

Update your software and resolve this issue.

[chiphenry]

I just ran into this myself. I will not buy Canon in the future. I rarely need colors and forcing me to buy something I don't need has made me angry. I can't print a tax form because I don't have MAGENTA!  

No More Canon for me and I'll quickly get the word out to the other three I assist on computer issues.

[chiphenry]

It was a deliberate one. It's a simple software issue and they want it this way.

I will not buy Canon again AND, I will not buy a color cartridge to make this printer work. It is dead to me, here and working but without color so I can't print in black and white. I deserve better. I have emailed the company and I DO NOT expect them to fix it, but they could fix it in short order if they wanted to.  It is a simple software change. It's a company decision. NO MORE CANON. Seeing this as a deliberate, known choice is their right but I don't have to do business with them. One of the printers needs wide format and we use a different brand already. I wanted to see how this Canon would compare to a Canon 7000 I once had that was wondeful. This is anything but. I'm very mad, and mad enough to make a chance based on this one issue. Consider me gone.

[chiphenry]

That's what I'm going to do. I will not buy a color cartridge to print in black and white. I informed the company of my choice. I highly expect to be ignored. They may not notice the few printers we buy but I'll not forget the anger this brought out.

It's a software choice. It can be fixed in minutes and posted as an updated printer driver. Think they'll do it? I don't. I'm just plain mad about it.  I won't buy a color one to fix it. I'll buy a new printer instead. Trust me.

[chiphenry]

Let me tell you what I read out of this. Your printer dialogue box does not have a selection for Black Only. Why?? Because your company has decided to force color printer use.

When I have a full, large, mostly new black cartridge and your printer won't print a tax form, that is a company decision.

I make decisions too. Here is mine. I WILL NOT buy a color printer to print a tax form. I'll buy a printer instead. Do you think it will be a Canon printer?  It won't be. Do you think I'll cave and buy a color cartridge? I won't. I won't be buying ANY Canon products until it's been far enough down the road that I forget how you treated me this time.  Do you think that will happen soon? It won't. 

This is a software issue, plain and simple, and those decisions were made in a fashion to fleece your customers. From this chat box I see you've made plenty of others mad. Will they relent and buy color? You might know but I don't know. I know only me and I WILL NOT buy a color cartridge to print in black and white. I will not use this printer. I will replace it if I don't get some satisfactory response, and I promise you, I do not expect one. Your company and your choices. My money will not be spent in  your direction unless I have to eat crow, apologize to many others here I commented to. I bet you'll save me the effort and make no changes, forcing me TO  make a change, in printer brands.