HP LaserJet P2055DN's going offline and not responding

[flyinghaggis]

I work for the NHS and we have had over 160 of these printers.

Two of them have developed the same issue. however they are both set up via USB. I wonder if you are assuming it's network related and it is hardware instead.

power cycle fixes it for a while.

I haven't tried it in anger but I ran one on a mini-switch off our network for a day and it didn't fail so it doesn't appear to be a fault with the device. All of the printers in the last batch of 10 we ordered all seem to have the fault/feature so it's not a hardware fault with one or two of them at any rate and it's unlikely they'd all be physically faulty.

[dasonix]

Hello All.

This thread has made very intresting reading.

We currently have 6 of these printers onsite and know that 3 of the devices do suffer from this issue.

Here is a bit of backround

A total of 6 printers were ordered 4 from one supplier and 2 from another.

This problem showed up very quickly following install. (static DHCP reservation) we tried messing about with the settings options but no result from that.

What we can confirm is that this issue is NOT firmware related. and is deffo hardware related as even the latest revision of the formater boards have the same issue.

Following our first call with HP we recived a new firmware update dated 30/4/09. this again didnt fix the error only gave us a new one to deal with ontop of the original. (84 Err ID31).

Following much chasing and a great deal of phone calls to HP we have had 6 new formater boards and 3 printers replaced only to be left with the same original fault.

This as now been ongoing for over 4 months and 3 of the printers havent seen the outside of there packaging yet as we see no point in installing them until the fault is fixed.

Currently we are stuck in Indian call center hell and cant seem to get hold of anybody that can actually do anythign to assist with this issue.

[DaveP]

We have just taken delivery of two of these. One is here in the office. I have had no problems from it yet [except for when I gave it the wrong IP address and then could not manage it over the IE interface ]

[danielson81]

We have one of these in the school office running via USB, it worked fine on an old SP2 computer, however they have just had new computers in the office and it works for about an hour then either disappears or fails every print! This after a uninstall, reboot, reinstall etc.

The only major difference I can find is that this PC has SP3 on it, whereas the old one doesn't.

I have tried the universal drivers as well, but to no avail.

[dasonix]

Hi guys I have looked into the xp sp2 and sp3 issue and we get the same with either SP. and as our printers are hosted on 2003 servers will have to check the service pack issue with them too.

good news though is that we have HP makign a sales call next week so will hit them to resolve other issues b4 they get new business

[danielson81]

Before I left I deleted the main users profile, rebooted and logged in again (ie to create local profile again) and it worked ok, so far...

[flyinghaggis]

Still having pain with these printers Turning off some of the protocols seems to improve things but it still often stops responding every couple of days.

Noticed there's a new firmware available (20090430 (17 Jun 2009)) for the P2055DN's so I'm going to give this a shot to see if it resolves the problems.

Has anyone else tried the firmware update?

[bossman]

@flyinghaggis:

What switches have you got these printers connected to?
It could be something to do with one of the switch protocols closing the port down.

As you have said you have tried on a standalone switch and computer and it works fine so I would be tempted to look at all the networked switches that these printers are connected to.

[dasonix]

We have been using the 30/4/09 firmware and it does not improve anything we ahve also investigated the switch related issue and cant seem to put the issue down to network hardware. I'm sorry to say its 100% HP related issue.

[mac_shinobi]

on the printer properties both on server and client disable the bi directional support and see if that helps - you could also try and disable advanced printing features under advanced tab ( both settings are btw ) and see if that helps

[flyinghaggis]

@flyinghaggis:

What switches have you got these printers connected to?
It could be something to do with one of the switch protocols closing the port down.

As you have said you have tried on a standalone switch and computer and it works fine so I would be tempted to look at all the networked switches that these printers are connected to.

Should have probably added it's failed on every network switch (3com/HP) we've plugged it into on our school network. The only time I've managed to get it not to fail for a couple of days was when I connected it to a standalone dumb 4-port netgear hub with only it and a single PC attached.

Most clues seem to point to there being somekind of packet/protocol being recieved by the printer, when it's on our main network, that's causing it to fail but it's like trying to find a needle in a IP haystack. Whatever's causing the problem isn't affecting any other printers apart from the P2055's as far as I can see

[Kermit]

We've just installed 25 of these printers across our sites and after 5 days running we've had our first experience of this problem. Our domain controller was showing an 'Offline' status for the majority of our P2055DN printers and I couldn't ping any of them. After switching off and on each printer the problem cleared itself and any queued jobs resumed.

I called HP this afternoon and after explaining the problem to 'Patricia' in Bangalore she was quick to tell me that the issue was caused by 2008 dated firmware and that it would be resolved by putting on the latest release. Apparently quite a number of customers have been calling with this issue and she was confident the firmware would solve it. As far as I can tell the P2055DN firmware can only be updated via USB - correct?

Co-incidence or not, I added all my P2055DN's to Jetadmin just 40 minutes before the problem occurred It did cross my mind that it might have had something to do with the problem as I guess the console is polling the printers for status information on a fairly regular basis. Does anyone here use Jetadmin with their P2055 printers?

Our printers are located on different branches of our WAN each connected by a BT Cisco router so it's rather odd that they've all went off at around the same time.

[bossman]

@flyinghaggis:

When you installed these onto the network did you setup a HP TCP/IP port or just a generic TCP/IP port before installing the printers?

I have had 2 of these printers for a little over 3 months and have had no problem as such and it is networked, I will keep an eye on them though.

[dasonix]

you can either update via usb, a special network installer or via a LPR

( lpr -Sxxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -Praw "filename.acl")

the latest version is rel.paris-IR5254-20090430.acl. but we have been running 30/4/2009 datecoded firmware since May and still have the same problems.

[dasonix]

all are setup using a std TCPIP port. all other HP printers that we use of which there are thousands work ok when setup like this.

For info we also set a PC up with Wireshark and kept it logging all traffic to the test printer and have not been able to locate any stray packets.