Canon MP600 doesn't seem to be printing black

[handsdown]

My Canon Pixma MP600 has started printing poorly, or not at all. After printing different colour blocks, I established that it doesn't seem to be printing black.

When printing directly from an application (eg Photoshop, iTunes, Word), virtually no black is produced, but when I take a screenshot using Grab and print this, some black is printed, though quite poorly. Curiously, when printing a CD label on iTunes, the positioning marks are printed fine, but the the actual songs and CD title aren't printed at all.

I've installed the latest driver (5.8.3). I've also deep cleaned and checked the nozzles, and print head alignment in Canon Printer Utility, all to no effect. The nozzle pattern test sheet produced black as a kind of dark grey.

The ink cartridges are not Canon, though they are a brand I've used many times before with this printer.

I'm using an iMac with OS 10.5.8 and a MacBookPro with OS 10.6.5, and have the same problem printing from both machines.

Any ideas?

Cheers

 

[MESSIEN]

HI to ALL.
I have a similar problem with my CANON SMARTBASE MP390. The sheets come out completely blank. NO error code. The printer does not know that it is not printing. The ink cartridges are full. The cartridges are NOT genuine CANON. Anybody could have a clue about this problem ??? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[handsdown]

Sorry for not updating

Hi - apologies for not updating this discussion.

In the end I took it to my local Canon service centre, and it turned out the printhead needed replacing. HK$600 later (abt $80US), everything works fine, though was a bit of a drag bringing the thing into town and collecting it as they don't deliver to my island.