Printer Will Not Respond To Touch and Network Communication Is Lost

[VisionAiry]

In many threads regarding this topic, the router comes in to play.  This is the last determining factor as many features within your router can be set for optimal printer performance.  These settings are not only limited to this problem but also may resolve many other issues you are having with network connectivity. 

Certain brand names come to mind, but as not to solely point fingers at specific models, just ensure you have the best settings so that the router is also “powerful” enough to wake the sleeping printer.  These are not necessarily steps outlined in any specific order.  I have just laid them out numerically for easy reading.

Step 1:  Ensure your router’s firmware is up-to-date.  You can do this by contacting either your router company or internet service provider for assistance with this.  Listed at the end of this post you will find additional resources such as emulators but quite often an internet search with your router’s name can help verify the steps for the person doing this on their own.  This step fixes a lot of problems.

Step 2: Enable Multicasting for the printer and Bonjour for those who use Airprint on their Apple products.

Step 3: Enable mac filtering for the hardware address set within the printer’s IP address.  I strongly recommend you contact your router company or ISP for assistance in port forwarding and any other features regarding DMZing the printer’s connection or topics previously discussed in this section. See previous post on which ports your printer uses.

Step 4: Other internal router settings to take into consideration is to set your encryption to WPA2/AES and not mixed mode but fixed mode.  Setting your 2.4 GHz band to Channel 11 has also become a known fix.  Lastly, verify G-mode is set as this mode seems to work well with all HP devices.

Step 5: Lastly, make sure the router is neither too close or too far away from the printer.  3 feet (approximately 1 meter) is the optimal range but as long as your wireless signal on the printer displays “excellent” that is a good indicator the router is in a good location.

Things to consider when setting up the router is the more complicated the network (such as extenders, in regards to both an access point and wireless signal enhancers, and dual-band routers) the harder it is to troubleshoot.  

Also, keep in mind that MiFi is not a true home-network connection and is instead a connection to a mobile broadband network, therefore not supported by HP as a stable connection when it comes to calling in for support. 

Wireless direct connect, or ad-hoc connections as they are commonly known, will not support most of the features of your printer as it disables internet for both the device/computer and printer.  Also, not a stable connection as it will time-out and is relevant to distance.

Replacing Your Wireless Router

Wireless Router Emulators and Guides

HP Wireless Direct

[VisionAiry]

Step 1: Put the printer in Demo Mode.  This is common on most touch-screen printers and can often be found in the Setup Menu.  In the Officejet 8600 for example, you will find this feature under the Discover Menu from the front panel and is called Product Tour.  This will keep the display active and prevent the printer from entering sleep-mode.  Touch the home button to access the front panel.  Once on the home screen, this feature will need to be enabled again to be affective.

Step 2: ePrint seems to not be affected by this and therefore allows the user to print when the computer/device has lost connection with the printer.  You can either download the ePrint driver to work like the normal print driver or simply setup your web-enabled services and email the printer at its hpeprint email address.

Additional Comments Provided By Users

These are not the conventional methods and are only offered here as a true last resort.  These suggestions seem to work in some cases but not all.

HP 7520 loses wi-fi connection. What can I do?

How do I enable keep-alive on HP Officejet Pro 8600?

HP Officejet Pro 8600 Network connection error message in EWS

I hope you find this information useful in regards to your sleeping printer and its lost network communication.  

Let me know if I can be of any more assistance.  

Kindest Regards,

--Cassandra--

         🙂

[hughdini]

HOP or HiP.  How can the world allow such **bleep** companies as HP?????

It costs £100 to buy their crappy prtinters and years of your life to try and make the useless things work.  Mine is about to be skipped ..... it is just shiot **bleep** **bleep**

[hughdini]

It might have a olution but why is it so f...ing compicated?  These printers are being sold to ordinary consumers and you need a PhD in computer engineering to get them working...

HP should be banned!

]

[hughdini]

Too p'd off with HP to be able to focus.  This machine is wasting my life away.  Re-invent the things so it works you bunch of numties!

[VisionAiry]

I understand how frustrating it can be so I made it a point to explain the steps in as simple terms as possible to "lighten" the load of troubleshooting for you.  A big part of this issue is actually the router, not saying HP couldn't design a printer to work with all routers, but perhaps the world should make everything work using the same setting.  Let me know if I can help you with anything as I am always happy to offer some assistance to make this as easy as possible for you.  

Good Luck!

[jollywa]

So do I understand correctly that the solution is to unplug it from the wall every time I want to print? Unless I am reading this wrong, I don't see much else suggested here, given that my firmware is up to date.

[VisionAiry]

I'm just not sure your printer would work very well if it was unplugged so you must have read that wrong since there is at least 20 suggestions listed here that does not mention unplugging it in order to print.  They are listed in the order of most basic to most complex solutions. Start at the top (setting a static IP) and work your way down.

[akcaksk]

After days of searching, the problem has been solved finally! I applied the following steps below. Some of the steps may be unnecessary, I didnt want to waste my time to figure out which.

1 Find your PC DNS servers by typing ipconfig /all in CMD.
2 Assign a static IP outside your DHCP range. For my Linksys router the range is between 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.150. So I set my static IP as 192.168.1.20.

To do this, hit the wireless button on your printer. This will show your printer's current IP. Type this to your browser. Go network/networking/network address. Choose manual IP and write 192.168.1.20

3 Now come to manual DNS server section and type your DNS servers you found before.

4 Open your HP Printer program which should be installed together with your driver. Hit utilities and update IP address. Update your address with your static IP.

5 Now go to your router settings. Locate wireless settings and change your radio band to 20 MHz standard not automatic.

6 Change your standard channel to 6.

7 Locate wireless security and change your security mode to WPA-Personal.

8 Disable UPnP

9 This is the KEY part. Change your key renewal to 36000 secs. (10 hours)

10 Go to Windows Firewall advanced settings. Enable all disabled printer and share ,inbound and outbond rules.
I believe the most important parts are setting a static IP outside your DHCP range and changing the key renewal time. I hope it works for you too

[jollywa]

I won't be back where that printer is until mid-April. But I will definiely try this when I get there and post to the forum with my results.