AirPrint with B201a unreliable. Upgrade???

[clockon]

I bought a HP B210a especially to be able to Airprint with IOS devices, but I abandonded trying to Airprint from iPad with B210a as the printer wireless connection was unreliable. (Actually worked once and then became flaky). Googling problem suggests I was not alone with this issue: there is a wireless problem with this printer.

Printer works fine while connected to Macbook via USB so I do not need to patch the Macbook, just the printer for Airprinting.

I now have a iPad3 and would like to be able to Airprint with my B210a. Today I tried to find out if there is an upgrade which I can get installed for the printer re: airprinting., but there seems to be no help with this that I can find. 

I attempted through the printer, wifi  --- and so reinstalled wifi connection OK, but was unable to find anything useful with "spanner", and "apps" --- yeilded error messages "please upgrade product"  (Not very helpful as that is what I am trying to do!!!)   "server error -1"  etc.

Thwarted    
Tim. 

[headsortails]

Almost all problems with symptons such as you describe are due to the wireless router. Some routers do not properly pass Bonjour (mdns) packets and some routers are set up to wirewall ports that are used when doing iOS printing. What make and model router do you have?

[clockon]

According to Spanner>Preferences>Product Updates  there are no updates for my B210a.

On persuing fixes, it seems I might have to change the printer IP address to a static one, as this is the only sugestion left.  

Today, after restarting wifi connection successfully, I was able to AirPrint several pages and images from myiPad. Including after turning on and off iPad.

After turning off B210a and later turning on again, I could no longer AirPrint.

The iPad alerted: "Connecting to B201a" then "Sending to printer" but nothing got printed.

Tried disabling wireless on B210a, unplugging and then sucessfully setting up wreless again:  I still cannot Airprint now.  (I cannot distinguish unsuccessful reconnections from OK ones). 

This is what happened too when I first bought this printer.  

I hope this additional information will be halpful, and that an explanation, if not a remedy, is forthcoming.

[clockon]

Thanks. I am using an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. I have given more details about my successes and failures in a reply to my original post.

[clockon]

Yet more particulars:

WiFi Guy suggests:

Describe your wireless network.  List the SSID and type of encryption you are using (none, WEP, WPA-PSK).

Apple Airport Extreme Base Station provides wifi. Extreme connects to Billion router by LAN, and Billion to ADSL.

SSID network name is found by printer, and connection is established. Configuration source DHCP. Mode Infrastructure. Authentication WPA-PSK. Encryption automatic (AES or TKIP)

Tell me if you're hiding the SSID or if you're using MAC-filtering.  In general, these security methods are very weak and are a poor substitute for WPA-PSK encryption.  BTW -- I never recommend MAC-filtering or hiding the SSID in my work as this causes more trouble than it's worth.

No. No.

Tell me what kind of wireless-devices are connected to your network.

HP all-in-one photosmart B210a

MacBook laptop

iPad1 and iPad3

Dell PC laptop

Does the printer have a good IP address?  Unless you purposely setup an Ad-Hoc network (that is a wireless network without a wireless-router), the IP address will start with 192.168 or 10.0.  You can get the printer's IP address by printing the Network Configuration Page or by running on the Wireless Network Test on newer HP wireless-printers.

192.168.1.5

See if you can browse the printer's internal web page by entering the printer's IP address in your browser.  If you can, then we know that the wireless-printer is on your network.

Yes, can browse. Printer is on my network.

Tell me what kind of personal SW firewall and anti-virus program you are running on your computers.  Personal SW firewalls can interfere with the installation and operation of networking SW on your PC, including network printer drivers.

MacBook (IOS 10.7.3)  settings show Apple Firewall is set to ON. 

PC  (Vista) runs McAfee antivirus.

iPads IOS5

[clockon]

I have found a solution! Rebooting my iPad3 resulted in successful airprinting.

I would be intrested to hear from an expert how this solves the problem.  (I had previously turned off the router, forced B210a to configure for another network, reconnected B210a to my router:  none of this made any difference  --- printing from iPad >sending to printer but nothing else & no printing). I suspect it might have something to do with agreeing on IP addresses.

Expert opinion please.