HP Officejet 4500 G510n freezes in "power save mode"

[brockel2]

I find it amazing that this forum is part of HP's site, and yet they are not at all concerned about the negative comments! Do you think they even read these posts?  I tell everyone I know not to buy HP products.

[kg1973]

I also have this issue with my HP Officejet 4500.  If it goes into "power save mode" it will not wake up unless it is unplugged.  Very inconvenient and frustrating.  We bought this printer in August of 2011.  Please let me know if there are any answers to this!  HP should have put out a recall on this product.

[brockel2]

I suggest you save yourself a lot of frustration and stress and not try to deal with HP on this...waste of time. I tried for months and finally just went out and bought a Canon.

[montalex]

No! Don't give up on this! Demand to speak to a manager and demand a credit towards a different model! I got a full credit for the H.P. online store, and I bought another model that works great.

Honestly this is the only time I have ever had problems with an H.P. printer. I've owned several, and, including the newest one, they'll always been of good quality. I cannot understand why they have been so remiss about simply replacing these.

I'm in Canada -- maybe customer service is good here?

[JeanRobbie]

DO NOT GIVE UP, I didn't and in the end HP sent me a upgrade, different model Officejet 6500A Plus, and it hasn't given me any problems, works great!!  Demand to speak to a service manager, don't take no for an answer.

[24gordon24]

In reply to the post on page 2 of this forum, dated 3-12-11 at 1:11 PM.   Thanks to the student WW595687 who could give us a solution when HP could not.         

This worked - I had to do it a couple of times.

It is a trap, I tried the setting to 0 - last April using the instructions prior to the Students post.  I'm referring to the one dated 2-28-11 at 12:05 PM.   It puts your printer in a continuous Power Save Mode and you cannot get out because you've put your power save mode at zero time, which means it will never never be out of that mode. 

You have to reset it to a realistic power saver mode time, such as the 65535 or 18 hours. Put it at the 65535 and turn the thing off when your done with it. Then turn it on only while your using it. I've just gotten back on the forum and tried this. Hopefully, it continues working this way.

So go to the page 2 post I mentioned above and also look at the previous post dated 2-28-11 at 12:05 PM.  You will need some of both post to do this correctly.  Just ignore anything to do with setting your mode to 0.  You want to set it to the 65535 and then remember to turn off that printer when not using it.

[brockel2]

That may temporarily save you from going into power mode, but some of us want to receive by fax,,,if the machine is off, no fax.

[petermac15]

I HAVE A SOLUTION!!!!!!!!!

Okay, here we go. I purchased 15 of these printers for our business. After getting them installed at 15 different locations in three different states, the  problem reared it's ugly head. Read posts and spent an hour on the phone with tech support with no luck. Kept messing with the settings and I think I have the problem resolved.

A couple of notes: we do not use the wireless function on the printers so not sure if this will resolve the issue with printers that have the wireless turned on. Also, YOU CANNOT TURN OFF THE POWER SAVE MODE. Don't care what anyone says, it can't be turned off. And yes, setting the timeout to zero will cause your printer to start up in power save mode. If you have already set it to zero, follow these instructions too so you can increase the time until it enters the power save mode. Let's get started.

Unplug printer. Hold down the # and 6 key while plugging printer back in. Continue to hold keys down until printer says SEMI NVM RESET. The printer will want you to set language, but don't do it yet.

Press the * and # key at same time. ********######## will appear.

Press 124. UNDERWARE: and a series of letters and numbers will appear.

Press the right arrow 6 times until you see SYSTEM MENU, press OK.

Press the left arrow key once and you will see SYSTEM MODE TIMEOUT. Press OK.

The timeout will show in seconds. Press 60 to change it to 60 seconds. Press OK.

Press the red X key twice to get back to where it wants you to set the language. Go ahead and set the language and location.

Now it sees that there are used ink cartridges installed and it wants to run an alignment. Press OK once.

It asks you to put in a sheet of paper. Put in paper and press OK. An alignment sheet prints.

It now asks you to put the alignment sheet on the scanner. DO NOT DO THIS!  It won't recognise the alignment sheet. Instead, press the red X. It will cancel the alignment and go back to the date and time.

After 60 seconds, the printer will go into the POWER SAVE mode. Press any key on the printer OR send a print job to the printer, The printer will wake up again for 60 seconds. If you are in the middle of a fax, scan or print job that takes longer than 60 seconds, the printer may go back into Power Save mode but it should finish the job anyway.

The 60 second time out was just a number I chose while trouble shooting and it worked so I didn't try to push it out any further. Feel free to try a longer timeout but I'm not sure what will happen.

Hope this works for everyone as it's fixed the 15 that I have. 

[montalex]

@petermac15 

Your solution actually brought my long frozen printer out of save mode. I was one of those cases in which the computer was permanently frozen in save mode after numerous other "fixes" had been applied. However, I set the timeout to 3600, as setting it to 60 didn't work! I mean, when I set it to 60, it went immediately into save mode, and wouldn't allow me to scan. When I set it to 3600, I was able to scan.

I'll report back on how this goes. I'll bet that I'll have to do the whole procedure again after the 3600 second timeout is over. I already got a replacement for this printer (free from HP), so it will just be gravy if I get it to work as a backup.

Thanks.

[montalex]

As an earlier poster suggested:

"Using the arrow buttons set the time out top zero then press the left arrow key one more time.  The value should now be 65535 seconds.  This 18 hous it's as high as it will go." Unfortunately, you still have to shut the printer off when you go to bed, otherwise it will go into power save mode.