Printer often goes offline/shuts off

[paulri]

Do other folks here have problems with their wireless printers shutting off randomly? I have my wireless printer set to go to sleep after 5 mins, but the "auto off" feature is turned off (in other words, it should only go to sleep, but never shut off, unless I press the power button obviously). Often, I find myself having to press the power button anyways, because after it has gone to sleep, it will not wake and accept my wireless print job. I have found this happening continuously, for years--this is not just a bad driver update. And I do have the latest drivers. This doesn't seem like normal behavior for a wireless printer.

I suppose I could just never have it go to sleep, but I use my printer sporadically throughout the day, sometimes not printing anything all day long, other times a print job every few minutes, so I hate to keep it on when it is not being used at all. Perhaps I should just turn it on the first print job of every day, and then shut it off at night?

I like the reliability of HP printers, I've always used them. But I have to say if I thought that I could have a printer always behave the way it should, I'd probably shell out more money and switch brands, next time.

FWIW, my printer is an HP P1102w.

 

[mattwithcats]

Set a reserved DHCP address for your wireless printer.

Find the MAC address of your printer, then go to your router.

Assign a IP address to your printers MAC,
then each time the printer wakes up, and asks for a DHCP address,
it will get the same one.

 

[paulri]

OK got the MAC, now I posted in a linksys forum as to how to assign an IP to the printer. It has one already (192.168.1.150, which lets me access the printer via a browser UI), but I'm not sure how to do what you were saying. I'll post back here to report if this works or not.

Set a reserved DHCP address for your wireless printer.

Find the MAC address of your printer, then go to your router.

Assign a IP address to your printers MAC,
then each time the printer wakes up, and asks for a DHCP address,
it will get the same one.

 

[mattwithcats]

Halfway there...

Login to your router, usually 192.168.1.1, then on the IP address page, there should be a button “DHCP Reservation”.
Under DHCP reservation, put in the MAC, then the IP you want assigned.
Remember, MAC addresses are usually uppercase, with colons after each hex value...

 

[mattwithcats]

Think of DHCP address as chairs in a room.

First person in the room, gets chair 192.168.1.2 assigned to the persons MAC address. Next person gets 1.3, then 1.4, etc...
If someone leaves, the next person entering the room fills the first available seat...

Your assigning a certain seat to a specific person, with a DHCP reservation..

 

[paulri]

OK did that. after entering the MAC, it now has a separate section, called " Clients Already Reserved." in that table of MAC addresses.

OK thanks, I'll see if this does the trick. I love everything about this HP laser apart from the continual going to sleep/turning off bit, but I'm not sure at all that it has anything to do with the printer itself or the HP part. Hopefully this will fix it.

Halfway there...

Login to your router, usually 192.168.1.1, then on the IP address page, there should be a button “DHCP Reservation”.
Under DHCP reservation, put in the MAC, then the IP you want assigned.
Remember, MAC addresses are usually uppercase, with colons after each hex value...

 

[paulri]

I'll give my printer a golden throne if I don't have to walk up to it several times a day and turn it on.

 

[JustinH]

Why would you do a DHCP reservation, when you can just assign it an IP address, outside the scope of your normal DHCP scope?

Assuming you on a typical home 192 network you could probably give it a 192.168.1.200 address and you should be fine, assuming you dont have 200 clients on the network.

 

[Rand]

not sure dhcp is the issue. I'd probably just dump it and buy a brother laser.
Mine prints fine after sitting there for 30 days.

 

[Boomer]

Dis you run the HP Printer diagnostic? This wokrs well for me when I get sporadic issues with my wireless HP printer.

 

[paulri]

Well I'll find out. If I can go a week or so without having any of these problems, I won't need a new printer.

not sure dhcp is the issue. I'd probably just dump it and buy a brother laser.
Mine prints fine after sitting there for 30 days.

 

[paulri]

Do you mean the print and scan doctor?

Dis you run the HP Printer diagnostic? This wokrs well for me when I get sporadic issues with my wireless HP printer.

 

[OVERKILL]

Set a reserved DHCP address for your wireless printer.

Find the MAC address of your printer, then go to your router.

Assign a IP address to your printers MAC,
then each time the printer wakes up, and asks for a DHCP address,
it will get the same one.

I can't see how you are drawing a correlation between his printer going to sleep and DHCP. Obviously it works when he wakes it up, so it isn't an addressing issue.

 

[Rand]

Well I'll find out. If I can go a week or so without having any of these problems, I won't need a new printer.

How much is toner? a Brother laser comes with full toner and under $100 I have about 20 in service for the last 10 years only 1 went bad.
before that had massive issues with Canon,HP, and lexmark having bonkers driver issues and odd issues such as you are having.

 

[paulri]

OEM toner is quite expensive, 70 bucks last time I checked. I only buy aftermarket toner, and have never put in OEM toner in either of the 2 lasers I've owned. Linkyo on amazon is supermediastore.com, and their toner is under 20 bucks for 1200-1500 pages.

How much is toner? a Brother laser comes with full toner and under $100 I have about 20 in service for the last 10 years only 1 went bad.
before that had massive issues with Canon,HP, and lexmark having bonkers driver issues and odd issues such as you are having.

 

[Rand]

my brother prints around 3k pages with the 10$ linkyo toner well last time I bought it .. it was 18$ for 2

but I understand its not that hard to push a power button and cheaper.

you could also try updating the firmware and it wouldnt hurt to put it on a permanent IP address.

 

[paulri]

Well I have seen in the last few days, this behavior continues, so I would like another solution.

I can just keep it turned on, never going to sleep--if in fact that will work--but I was hoping for a more high tech solution. I just installed new drivers a couple of weeks ago so I don't think that is the issue; besides, this problem has persisted for a long time.

 

[OVERKILL]

Well I have seen in the last few days, this behavior continues, so I would like another solution.

I can just keep it turned on, never going to sleep--if in fact that will work--but I was hoping for a more high tech solution. I just installed new drivers a couple of weeks ago so I don't think that is the issue; besides, this problem has persisted for a long time.

Check the printer settings to see if there is an option for it shutting off or not shutting off the wireless when it goes to sleep. It may be under the heading of "wake on WLAN" or similar.

Also, ensure you have the latest firmware on the printer.

 

[paulri]

I had updated the drivers a week or two ago, didn't realize that firmware was a different story, so today I updated firmware.

I looked in the browser interface for the printer, as well as the Windows 10 printer preferences and printer settings, and didn't see anything like Wake on LAN. I didn't see anything in the Device Manager either.

Check the printer settings to see if there is an option for it shutting off or not shutting off the wireless when it goes to sleep. It may be under the heading of "wake on WLAN" or similar.

Also, ensure you have the latest firmware on the printer.

 

[OVERKILL]

I had updated the drivers a week or two ago, didn't realize that firmware was a different story, so today I updated firmware.

I looked in the browser interface for the printer, as well as the Windows 10 printer preferences and printer settings, and didn't see anything like Wake on LAN. I didn't see anything in the Device Manager either.

IF that option is there, it won't be as a property of the device on your machine (Device Mangler) but rather through the web UI as you explored.

Let's see if the firmware update fixed it.