What is pilot error? Human error?
Yeah. I find it easy to blame the equipment first, but frequently it’s a mistake I’ve made. Oversights come in many flavors, but obviously, when there’s something wrong, there’s something wrong.
I’m surprised the printer hasn’t thrown an error if the GE print head isn’t firing. You could go into your logs and just check if there have been any errors or warnings.
Another troubleshooting method would be to put some semi-gloss or luster paper in the printer and create a new custom profile for it and just boost the GE level in properties at the time you are defining the paper.
Knowing for sure you have GE turned on and have a custom profile for a paper that is known to be used with GE eliminates several variables. Printing out of photoshop, with all that mentioned checked, should tell you something.
Obviously, you’ve pulled both the GE cartridge, the GE/Gray printhead, cleaned them both and cleaned their receptacles? A head alignment, more head cleaning, advance paper calibration, would be a good idea too.
One thing I have done in the past is to create color patches - squares covering a letter sized sheet, and print them out individually. You may find GE working on some sheets and not others.
All of these suggestions are low hanging fruit if in fact you have a driver issue, but that doesn’t seem likely since I haven’t heard of this issue being reported.
Before you go too far, however, maybe a call to HP support. You could start by telling them your GE cartridge seems to be faulty, and you’d like a replacement. They might walk you through some diagnostics and could hit on your problem if you’re lucky.
Mark