Officejet Pro 8600 continually drops connection to laptop

[jennio]

I have had my Officejet 8600 for about 1 month and it works great the first 10 minutes or so after I turn on the computer. After about 10 minutes, I can no longer scan or print to or from any computer in my home. I am running Windows XP and have already spent 2 hours on the phone with tech support and thought my problem was solved. About 5 minutes after I got off the phone with tech support, my printer lost its connection with my computer. I have run all the diagnostic utilities and they tell me everything is fine. Really frustrated and don't think I can return it to Staples because I no longer have all the packaging.

[Dragon-Fur]

Jennio,

Rats, I'm sorry your printer is dead so soon.  It may be the printer since it won't work from any computer.  What does the router log say?  OK...

IMO:

If you have the receipt, and you think that Printer is at fault AND HP thinks the printer is at fault... you might put it in a box with all it's little bits and parts and take it over to Staples.  Don't talk to the clerk.  Ask very nicely to talk to the manager - that's why they have managers.  Tell the manager you want a new printer.

Tell the manager you are real sorry about the box and all, but you didn't expect the printer to be a pile of useless metal and plastic - and you still have the receipt!  Here's the serial number...  It would be helpful if you have registered it... ?

If they give you a new printer and THAT printer doesn't work, then you might think about upgrading to Windows 7 and getting a new router.  Smiling.

I hope this helps!

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[jennio]

How do I print out  router log? I am generally tech savvy when it comes to hooking stuff up but not when it comes to diagnosing problems. Thanks!!

[Dragon-Fur]

Jennio,

Depends on the router.  You have to log in as the Administrator.  Some routers have the option to mail you the output from them, others just keep a log of what is going on... and even that option may need to be turned on (because it can be annoying depending on what the log does with the data).

The log function probably won't be too hard to find once you get into it.  It may be somewhere obvious, "logs"...

==========================================================================

You can also glean some information by looking at the printer log files.  There are a lot of them, and not all of the information will mean much to you, but you may find something of interest after looking at several of them and scanning for "things that look out of place"...  This is where you will learn some of that troubleshooting skill one needs when owning a home computer.  Smiling.  Look for things like "error=1", or "connection died, broken" - you know, the same sort of "bad news" error messages that one sees when anything else is not working.

Try looking for the following, where the * is replaced by any number of letters and or numbers.  This is what the logs look like in my system and they may be similar in your computer.

C:\Temp\HPSLP*.log

You cannot just click on the file and "see" the contents, but you can Right-Click on it and the "open" it with NotePad.  The files are text files and you can just look right through them.  Like I said, most won't be very interesting.  Look at the larger files and see if you find anything that looks useful.  Maybe you will find something that will help you figure out what is going on. 

If you find anything at all, maybe you could call HP and say, "Hey!  I found this!  Blah, Blah,  What is this?  What does it mean?  Is this the problem?"

I hope this helps!

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[Dragon-Fur]

Jennio,

Wondering if you have checked the network on this...  It might just be a network address conflict.  It would explain why things start out OK and then go sideways. It makes sense.

It means the printer is fine and everything is OK - you just need to check and reconfigure a couple of things on your network setup.  I know you spent time on the phone with the tech, but that's not the same as sitting down with a document and going over the issue with time to look at each setting and writing things down as you go...

I found this under the 8600 E-All-In-One Printer N911.  I'm including the link just in case it applies:

Unable to Connect to a Wireless Network When Using WEP Encryption and Shared Key Authentication

Here's the link to the wireless printer setup:

Wireless Printing Center

I hope this helps!

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[jennio]

I'll try that. Thanks! I may just uninstall everything and reinstall fron scratch. See what happens.

[Dragon-Fur]

I remembered (just checked again) that you have the XP setup.  If you are going to check everything, it's best to have the right information in front of you.

Here's the XP wireless network link:

Solve Setup and Internet Connection Issues on a Wireless Network with XP

Good Luck!

If you need anything else, just ask...

[jennio]

Thanks for your response. I narrowed down the problem to beginning while I am connected remotely  to my work computer through the VPN (which is almost 100% of the time I am on my laptop). So it has something to do with that. It doesn't seem to be a printer problem, so I am fine with that. I will just save stuff as pdf's and print when I am done working. I guess my computer just doesn't like multitasking :-)

[Dragon-Fur]

Hi Jenny,

It makes far more sense that it's a connection problem.  I was thinking, "Yeah, OK, the printer is dead."  Then, No, that's not right.  These nice printers just usually do that.   

Maybe you could save your work to a little usb drive and print the files from that drive to the printer.

From the User Guide, Page 171:

USB flash drives
HP has fully tested the following USB flash drives with the printer:
• Kingston: Data Traveler 100 USB 2.0 flash drive (4 GB, 8 GB, and 16 GB)
• Lexar JumpDrive Traveller: 1 GB
• Imation: 1 GB USB Swivel
• Sandisk: Ultra Titanium plus USB Flash Drive 4 GB
• HP: 8 GB HI.SPEED USB flash drive v100w
NOTE: You might be able to use other USB flash drives with the printer. However, HP
cannot guarantee that they correct functionality with the printer because they have not been
fully tested.

Good Luck!

Come back to the forum often - ask questions or take a look for answers; there's a lot to learn just by reading!

I hope this helps!

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 2012 Year of the Dragon!