To print or not to print

Went next door to help rescue Bob's HP printer.  I've forgotten how I used to approach IT problems, half the time its the user and this is an octogenarian but he is savvy.  He has a wiz bang Lenovo where the computer is built into the back of the screen however the printer is 3 to 4 yar old.  I used to hover over these problems in my worker days but I dived in when I should have hovered a bit more as the printer had two problems.
Turns out an update from a few days back has killed off compatibility with his old printer IE the printer has USB 2.0 ports and the computer uses USB 3.0.  As a rule I always prefer a hard wire connection however this had wireless printing capability so it was a way to bypass the USB issue. After hunting around we found a scrawled password to his router and voila wireless connection was enabled.   We were still beaten as there was no black being printed.  A new cartridge was put in but still no black print.  Time for a new printer.  One set of 4 cartridges was almost the cost of a new printer.