Printer suddenly printing in purple or pink, not black/white or color

[Ninasmum]

Suddenly the printer prints in pink or purple, not black, white or color. There are no error messages, and nothing changed in the environment. I am guessing some kind of cartridge or hardware error, but would like to confirm. The absence of an error message on the printer seems telling.

Thanks

[Bob_Headrick]

Please read this post then provide some details.  What printer model? What operating system?  

Most likely you are printing with an inkjet printer and the yellow and cyan colors have run out and you are printing in a mode that would use color ink for printing black.  This would typically happen when printing on photo paper or printing graphics.

[Ninasmum]

Sorry, the printer is HP Photosmart C4750 All-in-One Printer. The computer is running Windows 7...

It's possible the colors have run out, but wouldn't there be an error message? And (as far as I know) I'm printing in true black and white mode, so it should be using the black ink cartridge. It's just plain paper printing from a browser, mostly. But if you can point me to a way to test the settings, I would be very grateful!!!!

Thank you!

[Bob_Headrick]

The printer driver will typically render graphics (such as most stuff from a web page, even the text in some cases) in color for better quality.

See here for information on troubleshooting print quality issues.

In Windows 7 you can set the printer to "Black only" in the features tab of printing preferences.