Go to devices and printers, right click your printer and select printing preferences, then in the print options, there should be an option that says either, greyscale or black ink only, tick that box and it will only print black, no colour.
Ya, I know what you mean. My wife has a Brother. If one color goes out, it will refuse to print at all - grayscale or otherwise. I have an HP Officejet 6500. All of the colors can run dry and it will still print B&W (using grayscale, which is my default, of course). So a Hewlett Packard is one of your options.