I see back in May, Grumpy had a similar problem. My printer will not print in black! I've changed the ink! I've run the cleaning cycles. I've tried the troubleshoot section. All to no avail. I did get one page that printed in black from my office program right after I reinstalled the printer on my new computer. (I still use windows xp) Any other ideas? Or is this printer dead? :(

Are you using a new Canon ink cartridge? If you are using a re-filled cartridge, that nay be your problem.

Also, make sure your driver and printer are set to print Black or Black Only.

I'm a computer dunce! :rolleyes: I can't locate the driver for this printer, where do I find it? I did replace the ink with new canon cartridges. I don't really print a lot of docs, so I don't think it's dry. My test page printed the graphics just fine, but the words are almost non-existant. Thanks for the suggestions!:)

You are not a dunce, you just lack some experience with unknown features.

To find your printer : Open the START menu, select Control Panel or Printer /Faxes menu, depending on the Operating System you are using.

Find the printer in the list and edit it's properties or preferences.

Thanks for the info. All the settings appear to be OK. I think I'll try replacing the cartridge again. Perhaps it's just a dud! If that doesn't work, I won't print in black! It does just fine if it's green, blue, red.. :D

How set to print black only for canon i560 printer

Hi, JL

Sorry for the delay in responding, but cough and cold season has come to stay at our home. There are a couple of simple things that need to be checked.

1) Did you remove the packing tape the protects the electrical contacts on the bottom of the cartridge.

2) If you did, then get a pencil with an eraser on it and use the eraser to gently clean the contacts. When finished cleaning, blow the contacts clean.

3) Before you reinstall the cartridge take a slightly dampened "Lint Free" cloth and gently clean the ink nozzles.

Reinstall the cartridge and try printing the printer's self test samples, with the printer disconnected from the PC.

If the failure still occurs, then I would call the 800 number on the cartridge box and tell Canon that they sold you a defective cartridge.

To set the printer to print Black Only, you open the printer driver.

There should be an open check box that says Print Black Only or Print Gray Scale only. Put a check mark into the box.

Let me know if you need some additional help.

I have a Canon MP510, I did everything nothing worked, I worked on it all day cleaning EVERYTHING, finally got on a website and it said to use a different paper setting other than plain paper. I put mine on glossy photo and it worked!

I have a 560 and 3600 canon printers both offer a fantastic print test document but point blank refuse to print anything black in the clossy paper photo setting. I have tried everything I can think off to repair this issue to no avail.

I am on my third Canon printer in twelve month all have suffered the same fate, test print is excellent both black and colour, once you change to photo print the black goes awol?

Doesn't that just mean that you are using the smaller [eg 521] black printer cartridge rather than the larger one [eg 520]? If so, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having the large black cartridge to print out the larger volumes of black printing, so you have to replace the smaller cartridge much more often?

Or doesn't your printer have the two different black cartridges? If it doesn't have the two different black cartridges, does it use the three colour cartridges to mix together to create "black" for high quality images?

I've just replaced printhead and can't get the black 520 to print anything, no matter what I did e.g. cleaning function, alternative cartridges.

But changing setting to glossy paper, as you suggest, did work, but still doesn't make the 520 cartridge work, as far as I can tell, just uses 521 cartridge.

Any comment, suggestion, advice would be great