HP Deskjet 5440 Quit Printing Color, smears black, checks OK?

hi folks
last christmas bought a Deskjet 5440 for the wife, as Christmas present because she complained about the feed of a perfectly-working 722C that I have used for years with no issues. !! recently, it started smearing black ink on black text stuff. Then today we noticed it quit doing color.
I went to HP site and ran a Driver Check package they have, to see if I have latest and if there are issues. Gave me the all clear...... but it still messed up.
Ran a "test page" from the software onboard and its all black, and smeared here and there at random.

stumped.
help???