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

talentetta
Apprentice

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.

37 REPLIES 37

TanyaG
Apprentice

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). 

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
Apprentice

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.

algia10
Apprentice

I have the same problem. How do I fix this, because I cannot afford to buy color cartricges right now.

 

TIA

Algia, first off, they have no intention of fixing this. It isn't a mistake. They are forcing you to buy color cartridges because they can. I suggest you buy a Black only. I'm going to replace mine with a Brother. I think that's your best choice. Your 2nd choice, and not any better or worse, would be Epson. I wish you well. I'm done with Canon. My first was great. We had a wide printer for one of the desks, also great, but not this. This won't be allowed to happen again. Best wishes!~!

Well that's sad. I am going to have to print at Office Depot then, because I cannot afford to buy new printers now. This looks like **bleep**ty corporate greed again. Not cool.

 

Thanks for replying.

AnaD88-88
Apprentice

I came here to find out why my canon MX860 won't print a Black and White text doc when the magenta color is empty. I read the bogus "reasons" but other printers do not do this, and it doesn't really make much sense except to force people to buy the color pack which is outrageously expensive compared to other brands for the number of prints you get out of them!

 

I started sending only B/W jobs to it to conserve money, but it seems to use color anyway, I follow all the advice to conserve the color, but this printer is poorly designed to use up a ton of ink, unlike any other printer I've owned or worked with at my job. It is very clear it is designed this way so you can make more money.

 

I have some advice, I will pay more for a quality printer so if this should be priced higher to make a good printer with good features then for the love of God price it higher and give it good quality hardware and software - let me be clearer - good for the consumer, not your greedy short-sighted board of directors and stock-holders who are obviously not thinking about the reputation of Canon, but only short term profits. Let me tell you, good features include ink conservation. I got this as a gift, and after researching the printer, I realized it isn't one I EVER would have picked myself. I pick the best printer I can afford, and this is not it.

 

Better design is good for both consumer and the environment, I guess less good for your stock-holders, but they won't be happy as you keep on losing business. I always purchased HPs before this, will do so again once this hunk of junk dies. If HP has gone the way of Canon, I'll try Epson or another brand, but I refuse to support garbage printers, computer equipment should not be so disposable, it is TERRIBLE for the environment.

chiphenry
Contributor

Here's now. You throw Canon out with the garbage and you buy a Brothers that prints only in black and white and you never buy Canon again. There. Problem solved.

 

I got an update on my printer where it .. nevermind.. it failed again after that. I use it as a scanner and I will BUY NO MORE INK from those fools.

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