Printer says insert paper to align ink cartridges

Hi,

The following may work: remove all the ink supplies. Remove the printhead and soak it for about 5 minutes in 0.5" of very hot water. Gently blot the printhead on a soft damp paper towel to remove the excess water, then replace in the printer and then reinstall the ink supplies.

I also have the OfficeJet 6500 and had the same problem. The black text was printing using a mix of colored inks instead of the black ink, resulting in a grey, fuzzy text. I finally found a solution. In each application under Page Setup, there is an option called "Format for". Mine had been set to "Any Printer". I changed that to "Officejet 6500 E709n [830E4A]" and now it prints the black just fine. I have a Mac running 10.4.11. Hope this helps.

two actions I took that worked.

1) Remove the print cartridges. Raise the lever that holds the printer casing down (plastic square box), lift it up gently, remove it, and wipe with a clean, dry paper towel.

2) from the menu option on the printer. Go through the set up option and select "clean printer head" from the options. It will also do a self clean.

I did those two and it works nice.

Try Cleaning the Cartridges manually and automatically.
For the cartridge clean it with a damp lint free cloth and also for the printheads wher eyour gonna be inserting the cartridges.
Follow these steps do do the automatic aligning and cleaning:
Click Start and then go to Printers and Faxes (XP), Printers(Vista), Devices and Printers(Win 7)
1. Right Click on your printer Icon 2. Go to Printing Preferences 3. Click the Features Tab 4. At the bottom of the window you will see Printer Services or Device Services. Click on it. 5. Choose Align Printheads on the list.

For Cleaning the Printheads, Instead of choosing Align Printer choose Clean Printheads.
I hope this helped.
Try Printing Again. I hope I was able to solve your problem. :)

Try using the HP Print Diagnostic Utility in Windows - HP Customer Care (United States - English).

If you need more help come back.

Post / thumbs / testimonial are welcome!

not ridiculous as the new printer costs less than replacement cartridges
check for ink in the black cartridge
check that the driver is still connected
check for compatibility with the pc

My printer did that a few months ago. I tried everything to get it printing black but in the end I had to take the ink cartridge back and return a new one. Some ink cartridges dry out when they are being shipped if not stored in proper conditions.

Print test page in the software, if no blue try print head clean again, if no go return cartridge for replacement.

Is it genuine or refilled??

This video shows how to change ink cartridge on HP 6500 and 6500A