A friend was getting rid of some office equipment they no longer needed and gave me an Epson Stylus CX7400 printer. After installing the drivers and hooking it up as per instructions (Power on printer, install drivers connect to USB port) and it seems to be working fine as far as that goes. But the printer was SHOWING that all of the ink cartridges were empty and needing to be replaced.

I made note of the type required (Epson 69 or Epson 88) and bought all new cartridges (total of four) I followed all the directions to install them (Shake 4-5 times before opening vacuum sealed pouch, remove yellow tab, insert and press down till it clicks, close lockbar and close printer) The printer now shows the BLACK ink as mostly full but the CYR cartridges as empty still. So I followed the help to make sure they are reseated. It was still showing that they are empty (tried REBOOTING as WELL)

So i took out the new ones and reinstalled the old ones and it suddenly read them as being Low, but not empty. I did a nozzle clean and then printed the test page. The CYR printed with the red missing a portion, but no black. I did the clean again as per instructed and repeated the test and again the cyan and yellow printed correctly the red was showing missing spots and no black.

I tired printing a photo and the colors were off (blues were dark enough, reds were dark, I think too dark, yellows washed out, and the blacks came out grey. I printed just plain black text and got a blank page. After that I tried to print a test page but it started telling me the cyan (old cartridge) was empty. And so I replaced them all with the new cartridges I bought. and it is STILL saying they are empty.

Can anyone help? How do I get the printer to realize that the new cartridges (bought at a big name PC store, in Epson packaging straight from the manufacturer) are not empty?Meant to add, I did a check for driver updates and it says it has the LATEST drivers