Printers vanished from network

[Little-Miss]

Ok, what makes a printer suddenly uncontactable?!

 

My server wont ping them, if i go to install them again they deny all knowledge of them being connected to the network.

 

They are connected to a Ruckus access point (this is our temporary school!) and have been for the past 6 odd months!! The printers still have the ip i gave them...im completley stumped. Not what i needed on a Tuesday morning when i need to be on the building site sorting the install out!

 

Help!

[Little-Miss]

One of the routers had been powered down so i powered it back up and that hasnt made any difference...so i dont think rebooting routers will help...

 

Also affecting two printers...

Edited May 8, 2012 by Little-Miss

[Achandler]

Have you tried rebooting the printers now everything is back up.

 

I have seen printers giving Etehrnet hardware errors before just because the switch they were on powered down briefly and a reboot fixed it. Some manufacturers make the printer need to see the default gateway, meaning if the downed router was the gateway they would give up.

[3s-gtech]

Shared printers on a print server? The common cause would be that the spooler service has stopped on the server, or a dependant.

[Little-Miss]

Well I've got one going. The default gateway and subnet were wrong for some reason.

 

Still working on the last though....

[Little-Miss]

Still struggling to get the other to respond. Just to make this one more fun....it's the worse setup ever! But it has worked up until now! This one is a wireless router on a gang lead, which is connected to a powerline plug thingy which then goes to another gang lead where the powerline is attached to the printer!! Awful I know but I did/does the job in the situation we are in.

When I ping this one I get destination host unreachable but no packet loss so something is getting there!

 

Anymore ideas?

[Little-Miss]

Help!......

[Achandler]

If you can't ping the printer then can you ping the router?

 

Or can you ping neither?

[Little-Miss]

Router is talking to me.....

[Achandler]

have you tried taking the printer in question off the wifi and re adding it? again?

[X-13]

Router is talking to me.....

 

First sign of madness, that is.

 

Or caffine overdose.

 

 

Are you sure it isn't a dodgy network interface?

[Michael]

Still struggling to get the other to respond. Just to make this one more fun....it's the worse setup ever! But it has worked up until now! This one is a wireless router on a gang lead, which is connected to a powerline plug thingy which then goes to another gang lead where the powerline is attached to the printer!! Awful I know but I did/does the job in the situation we are in.

When I ping this one I get destination host unreachable but no packet loss so something is getting there!

 

Anymore ideas?

 

It does sound a bit of a mess I agree. Too many points of failure.

 

On the printer I'd generally recommend you set the IP, Subnet, Gateway and Primary DNS and optionally, External DNS (if supported).

 

Are you setup with one or more VLANs or one or more domains? I presume you've switched off/on each link in the chain as it seems there's a lot that can go wrong.

[Gatt]

Have you tried plugging a "known good" printer or pc into the same port and cable as the current bad printer?

If still nothing, try new cable and network port

 

If the good device works, try plugging the naughty printer into somewhere where there is a device that is working...

 

Last Resort - reset printer to factory default

 

Extreme Last Resort - break out the emergency sledge hammer...

[Little-Miss]

Right.....there were too many variables so I took out the middle man and plugged the printer straight into the router. Seemed happy after that. Just hope the class where I've moved the router from slightly still get enough coverage!

 

Those powerline thingys have done well to last this long and work over ancient power supplies and a gang lead each end!