Just been summoned to look at my sister's printer (Lexmark Z517) as she had put a new black cartridge in, but hardly anything was coming out on the printed page (only faint occasional grey lines on the test page). When I got there she told me that she had put a new colour cartridge in a few weeks ago and that hadn't worked either. As she is a bit of an air head, I thought she would not have took the tape off, but surprisingly she had. Both cartridges are showing on screen as full, but when you take them out they seem to have dried up. I've tried cleaning the nozzles and re-aligning the print heads with only a marginal improvement (still only faint occasional grey lines and no colour whatsoever on the test page). I can't see where she went wrong with installing the cartridges. The tape was removed and they were in the correct position. Anyone know what else could be the problem?
May need cleaning Print heads can become blocked if they haven't been used for a while or the weathers warm ( Not a chance there!) - so they may need cleaning. Are there any maintenance tools you can use to clean the print heads? It can take quite a while as well - sometimes the first clean won't always work you may need to do it several times. </p> Also has she got the correct ink cartridges - that could be worth checking too</p>