A customer of ours brought in his HP Photosmart C7250 AIO yesterday for me to look at the print quality issue he had. He said color copying was fine but color printing was terrible.

I first checked what ink he was using. Other than the HP 02 magenta, all cartridges are HP original. The cyan is a little low (24%) left, but all the others are quite full.

I printed a self-test report. It was terrible. Black, cyan and light cyan were all streaky, while light magenta and magenta were "missing". I then did a printhead cleaning, but could only bring the black, cyan and light cyan back. I consulted the user's guide and did a printhead alignment. The test page came out with only the light magenta missing. I performed another printhead cleaning and printed another self-test report. Strangely, both the light magenta and magenta were missing.

This morning, without doing any printhead cleaning and alignment, I printed a self-test report. It was terrible again (similar to what I had yesterday)! I replaced the light magenta cartridge, and performed similar cleaning, alignment and test. I still could not bring the light magenta and magenta back.

What might be the culprit and what else could I do to rectify the problem?

Your suggestion is highly appreciated. Thanks,

Eric