It depends on the model of printer, but typically on anything relatively new, as long as you set it to BW everywhere possible it will still print.
If you set it to Auto, or color, or the driver is set to Rich black and not Pure black, then it will fail.
I don't printt in color a lot, so to save money i don't want to pruchase the color catridge, but continue to print in black and white and ignore tthe error for empty tonner.
Is this possible and if so how do i enable it. right now it ask me to replace the tonner and does not let me do anything with the printer.