GF's color toner on her laser printer are depleted, but she only prints black & white

[rx7ven]

I'm a little befuddled here. To my knowledge, toner cartridges do not dry out since its powdered form. My gf's old inkjet printer's ink kept drying out so I bought her a colored laser printer last year because it was on sale and it happened to be cheaper than a black & white laser. Knowing that toner cartridges don't dry out and she only prints black and white, that was fine with me. About 2 months ago she told me her magenta ran out of toner but she said she never even prints color. I told her to take it out, shake it around and put it back, didnt help. Okay..... well it can continue to print so i told her to keep using it since she dont use color anyways. Today, she told her blue is out of toner. Now i'm like WTF? Does anyone know why this could be happening? I have a black & white laser printer, and i hardly print. its been sitting around for years and my toner is not depleted.

 

[corkyg]

More info needed. What brand and model? What toner carts does it have? Etc.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Corky is right, but to hazard a guess without that info - there are a couple of likely suspects. It does a recalibration after power saver or being turned on which uses all the toners. It is set to auto and using colors to make the black look better.

 

[rx7ven]

it is a Dell C1760nw color laser printer with the OEM cartridges that came with the printer. i replaced the black once with Dell OEM XKP2P cartridge.

 

[corkyg]

DAPUNISHER nailed what I was thinking. Many color lasers use the color carts to enhance black which is the sum of all the colors.

 

[corkyg]

There is a way to set Dell color lasers to use Black only, otherwise it uses color to enhance black. Check ou these notes:

https://www.dell.com/community/Printers/3115cn-setting-to-print-in-black-only/td-p/3525023

 

[Paperdoc]

On many colour laser printers (and inkjets, too) there is a way to deal with this, but it is NOT the default. Whenever I print on my colour Laser unit, after the first window pops up to set printing choices, I click on the printer Properties button and in the new window I set details of how I want this done. That may include what paper size and type to use, one- or two-sided printing, etc., most of which I am not changing. BUT by default the printer will use ALL four colours for the page, whether or not there actually are any colour items. So I always (except for colour prints) tell it to use Black & white only to print, and very often also tell it to print this as a text document, rather than a photo. THEN I tell it to proceed. That way it WILL use only the black toner for this job, but it will NOT remember those settings and it needs to be re-done on the next print job.

 

[rx7ven]

thank you. i was thinking if it was somehow using the color when printing black. i will go in her print settings and set the default to black. thanks all for the quick responses!