I too have had this problem. Our light black cartridge was the first to run out of ink, and when I replaced it I got the "ink cartridge error" message. I tried replacing one of the other inks that wasn't empty yet and got the same massage, so I went back to the original cartridges, pulled out the light black which was empty, turned the machine off and back on, and when the machine came back on it told me there was a missing cartridge which I then replaced and everything worked fine. Not the best way to deal with what should have been a simple ink switch, but it worked. By the way, I called Epson and they were no help at all. I don't think that they are aware of this problem which seems to effect a lot of machines.