Officejet Pro 8600 All-in-One connected as network printer loses connection

[pcwizard]

Hi BobP,

I understand you bypassed your switch in the previous testing, but were some of the computers still hooked to the switch? if so, you may want to try a different switch to help isolate the issue. It appears that the printer is working correctly at this point, and appears to be a network enviroment issue with your home network. If i think of anything else to try i will let know.

[BobP]

Thanks. I am going to try several different configurations of the network. You are correct that the computers currently are connected to the router through switches; it is going to be a bit of work to bypass those, but that is what I plan to do. I probably won't be able to completely test this out until sometime next week, however, because of the amount of work involved in doing it. I'll post the results (might be helpful to someone else) when I complete the testing.

Interestingly, the connections stayed active overnight last night. I had changed a few of the cables, but basically the network map was the same as before. We'll see if this holds up.

[pcwizard]

Hi BobP, 

Sounds good, Glad to hear we were able to help isolated the issue for you. Wish you the best of luck troubleshooting your network. Have a wonderful day.

[BobP]

I had been planning to upgrade the home network to cat 6 ethernet cable throughout, but this problem caused me to take action now instead of waiting. I planned to have two computers and the Officejet 8600 Pro connected directly to the router, and all other equipment on the network to connect through a gigabit switch to the router. In the process of tracing the cables, I discovered that the network cables had a great deal of noise on them, and that in several places they ran right alongside house power lines. I therefore pulled new cat 6 cables, putting them inside EMT conduit for a large part of the run, and connected the two computers and the Officejet directly to the router. I completed this part of the task yesterday, and so far it appears to have solved the problem described above. I will wait for a few more days to make sure this does in fact take care of the loss of connectivity before I declare the problem cured.

I have not yet replaced the cables going to other equipment on the network with cat 6 cables, but plan to do so in the near future.

One thing I did notice yesterday afternoon: the control panel on the Officejet announced that an update to the Web Printing option was available. I accepted it, and in the process of doing the installation, the Officejet rebooted itself. When it did so, all computers lost connection to it and the connection did not automatically restore when the rebooting was completed; I had to reinstall the driver software on both computers to restore operation of the printer. It seems to me that either the driver software, the firmware in the printer, or the update installation should somehow automatically restore operation of the printer without the necessity of human intervention after an update of this nature.

[pcwizard]

Hi BobP,

Thank you for the update. Glad to hear you have possibly fixed the issue with connectivity. Have a wonderful weekend.

[BobP]

Well, the problem isn't solved. Right after I posted the information above, both of the computers which have the Officejet installed as a network printer lost the connection to the printer. As before, this doesn't mean that they have lost the network connection to the printer, it simply means that the printer is disabled on both computers. I did not see any event occur which would have caused this. I discovered it when I tried to print something...

Back to the drawing board. I am getting very frustrated.

[BobP]

A point: when I tested the printer on another network, I only had it connected to that network overnight, and since it stayed connected and enabled overnight I assumed it had worked fine. However, the disabling this morning occurred after a successful overnight period; it happened to two computers at the same time; so I am not yet convinced that the problem is not in the printer, or else some software problem in the firmware or the driver. It may possibly be related to Windows XP Professional SP3, as both computers are running that OS, but the fact that it occurs simultaneously with both computers makes me suspect the printer, either hardware or firmware.

When the print and the scan-to-computer functions are disabled simultaneously on both computers by the occurrence of this problem, a network connection test (not the HP software test) still shows network connections from both computers to the printer.

[pcwizard]

Hi BobP,

Have you ran the lasest updates for the printer?

You might want to try hooking the printer back up to the other network for a longer period of time to see if it does experience the issue. Let me know what you find out?

[BobP]

Unless the printer firmware or drivers have been updated within the last two days, then I do have the latest updates.

I will have to wait until next week to hook up the printer to the other network. I will try to do that Monday for several days.

[BobP]

OK, I installed the 8600 on the test network (at my church); I installed it last Sunday using DHCP, and it stayed operational overnight, so I decided to try using static IP. It would not allow me to set a static IP, so I returned to DHCP and it continued to operate until Thursday, when I removed it and brought it back home. Since installing it at home (I installed it with automatic IP) it has continued to lose connectivity at least once a day. The problem is it happens when I am not around, and I do not have any network logging software which can detect when the printer loses its connectivity, since the network connectivity is actually still there, it just can't communicate in a print or scan mode. Therefore I still don't have a clue as to what on the network can be causing this problem.