HP OfficeJet 6500 (non-wireless) times out on the network after varying periods of inactivity

[guitarist]

Hi,

As the subject states, I have an HP OJ 6500 that will time out on the network after some random period of inactivity.  It will not respond to print jobs, pings, http requests for its webpage, or nmap scans.  A shutdown/restart of the printer temporarily fixes the problem, until it times out again.  I figure that this isn't related to drivers, since it doesn't need drivers installed on a machine in order to be on the network.  Anyone have an idea on why this might be?  Has anyone else run into this issue?  I don't have any history of auto negotiation problems on my network (I've dealt with devices at work that don't play nice with auto negotiation, and the only solution for them was to set it to manual), but just in case, I changed the setting to manually set it to 100Mbps Full.  Having just done that, I've yet to see if that changes anything, but I want to see if anyone else has any potential solutions.

Thanks.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

We have heard reports of this.  How long have you had the printer?  What other devices do you have on your network?

[guitarist]

I bought the printer about a week or so ago.  It's already timed out twice.

As for my other devices, I have a Netgear 8port Gb switch as the central point in a star topology, with 2 other PCs wired, 2 wireless laptops, a wireless Wii, and a wireless router attached to a cable modem.

I also forgot to mention that I have the printer set to DHCP, and my wireless router has some rules set in its static DHCP to keep it to a specified IP address (it's never been a problem for any of my other devices, as I do it for every device on my network, but just throwing that bit of info out there, in case that could be the hiccup).

[guitarist]

update:  it timed out again today, so setting the auto negotiations to manual didn't fix it.  I'm going to try manually setting the IP address, perhaps it's having issues renewing its DHCP lease.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Does the printer recover by power-cycling your switch or unplugging the LAN cable to the printer?

[guitarist]

Good question.  I have to admit, I didn't unplug it when I first noticed, I only checked for a link light (which was there).  I'll try unplugging the LAN next time (if there is one--I've already set the IP to manual).  Up to this point I've been power-cycling the front switch to fix it though.

[guitarist · Accepted solution]

So it looks like the static IP address solved it--it has not yet timed out since I set it.  So it appears that fixed it--DHCP lease renewals seem to give this printer problems.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Interesting ... keep us informed if this works out.

[InkedOut]

I have the same problem with my OJ 6500.  Unfortunately, I have it set with a manual IP address and it still has the same problem, i.e.

-Timeout, offline problem

-Stops in the middle of a print job, sometimes in the middle of a page while printing.

I don't think the solution in the previous post will work because I've already used it unsuccessfully.

If I sit next to the printer and press the power button, the printer comes back online and can be accessed via the web IP address. 

Does anyone know how to turn off the HP power save/standby mode?  As long as the power button is ON, the printer seems to work OK.  Does anyone know how force the printer to wake up via a LAN access or when it recieves a new print message?

Some other posters say this is a useless printer because of this problem.  My old HP printer did not have this problem.

[guitarist]

Well, I've not had to reset my printer once since I last posted.  I left my auto-negotiation set to manual 100Mb Full Duplex, did you set yours to that?  It's possible it was a combination of those.  On the other hand, I never had an issue with my printer stopping in the middle of a print job, except once, but that was a problem with my wireless, not the printer.

As for adjusting the standby period, I'm not aware of a way to do that.  At the least, there's not a way in the web interface that I see.