Printer suddenly printing colors incorrectly

I am using Windows Vista Ultimate SP2, HP Deskjet D2430. Printer has always worked fine until a few weeks ago when this problem suddenly appeared. Did a printer self-test..all colors print correctly. Print a Windows test page or anything else..prints really weird colors. I am totally stumped. Tried new print cartridge, uninstalling, reinstalling, downloaded new drivers, still same problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Jessica

 

have you tried to align the printer cartridges.

 

or calibrate the colors of the printer. you can find these in printer preferences -> device services

 

Yes, I did align the print cartridges. But still, the really odd thing is that the printer's self-test page comes out perfectly, all colors fine. It's just everything else (Windows) that prints incorrectly.

 

If windows is printing the pages wrong, then it's a communication issue between which ever program you are using and the printer.

It's not a hardware issue, but a software one.'
Try this.

Open Paint.
Draw a few different colored lines.
Print using default settings.
If the page comes out good, your problem is whichever program you normally use to print.
If the page comes out wrong, the you have a problem with the drivers installed for the printer. This could be because you had previously had a different printer installed that wasn't properly uninstalled, or the current printer wasn't installed properly (believe it or not, there are a LOT of specifics when it comes to properly installing printer software).

Give the Paint test a try.

 

And so you know, the reason I had you use paint is because it is a basic system program that uses the hardware drivers/access to the printer and not the software that came with the printer.

In other words, if paint doesn't work it's definately a problem with your Windows install.

 

Ok, so I tried the "Paint" test you suggested with the lines and the colors were fine. Then I opened a photo with Paint and printed...not fine. Why would that be different? Really confusing! I have attached a scan of what actually prints and the original jpeg photo file so you can see what is happening. Thanks for your help, let me know what to try next!

 

Try this:

Open the original jpeg with paint.
Go to File>Save As...
Save it as a bmp or tif.
Close paint and open the NEW picture file.
Try printing again.