Hi, I hope someone can help me with this, because this printer is getting to be a new adventure as the years go by anymore.
I've had my printer since September 2011, so it's not new to me, and not under warranty. I buy only Dell cartridges from the website - they are too expensive to buy except on my Dell charge account, so I expect them to be of the quality that warrants paying nearly $100 a shipment for 2 cartridges. But I've found, as the price goes up, the quality is going down.
My current problem is that I bought 2 Dell Series 23 High Yield cartridges - for the Black and the Colors - and installed them on December 8, 2015 (I tape post-its to the printer showing what date I install new ink cartridges). I don't do a lot of printing anymore, and I've had high yield cartridges last from 8 months to a year in this printer. But, this is the 2nd set in a row with which I'm having problems.
Today, I went to print two 1-page emails. One came out OK (not great, but OK), but the next one came out pink and black. So, I went to the maintenance and checked the ink levels: both were nearly at 1/2. I chose to do a deep cleaning on the printhead. The pages came out even worse than my emails, the black was streaked, and there were only tiny blotches of yellow and cyan, and streaky magenta but it was the darkest color. I tried again, and got worse results - no blue or yellow at all. So I went into the software from my connected desktop, and the troubleshooter found no problems at all, it shows the ink levels in the color as being even, but after printing just 2 deep cleaning pages and a test page, my ink decreased by about 1/2 of what it had! That's for both cartridges. This is fishy, because the black cartridges should yield more than the color, given the same amount of use. So now, they are at about 1/4 full - it's hard to tell with those little graphics.
I don't know if this helps, but the test page has the following information: Printhead information: Used black 1% Used Yellow 4% Used Cyan 3% Used Magenta 3%. And it printed a solid block of Black, two small lines of Yellow, an empty spot, and a solid block of Magenta. I keep my print settings set to use all available ink, I have NEVER had the color ink lose two colors when it was showing a relatively substantial amount left in the cartridge.
My last black ink cartridge had to be replaced early because the software kept refusing to use it, saying it wasn't a Dell cartridge, even though it was a Dell Series 23 and came straight from Dell. I got tired of pulling it out and putting it back in after every print job to override the error. So I'm getting really tired of losing money on ink cartridges, they are getting more and more expensive every year, that's why I rarely print. I'd buy a new printer if it changed my ink costs.