Pulling my hair out! Can't set up wireless printing on HP Photosmart 5510

[spokenmotion]

Just bought an HP Photosmart 5510 wireless printer.  It connected the the wireless network in my home without any problems (confirmed by Diagnostic sheet produced by printer and the Wireless light a steady blue, like manual says it should be).  My Mac can see the printer on the wifi network...but won't print and says it is 'not connected'. If I physically connect the printer to the Mac via USB (as I did when I se it up), everything seems fine until the point when it tells me to disconnect USB cable to finish wireless install.  Then it says

"The wireless network settings were successfully downloaded to your device. However, your Mac was unable to locate the device on the network.

Please make sure that: 

• Your Mac is connected to a wired or wireless network that has access to your device.

• Your device is connected to the wireless network "TALKTALK-FCC82C".

Click "Retry" to attempt to connect again using the current settings. Click "Go Back" to enter different settings." (clicking retry does not resolve the issue)

When trying to set up the ePrint function (for my iPad) the printer states "Server Connection Error.  This printer was unable to connect to the server.  Check the internet connection and try again, or enter a proxy address".  

I've re-booted the computer and router and re-installed the printer driver (for Mac OSX 10.7.2).  When doing so, I got the message:

"Your device has an Auto-IP address. This may indicate a problem connecting to your access point and/or problems with DHCP on your network. Make sure your Wireless Access Point (router) and your device’s wireless radio are functioning correctly and have strong reception. You may need to contact your internet service provider or network administrator for assistance, or visit www...... (etc)

I don't understand any of this.  Can anyone PLEASE help me?  Some forums discuss similar problems and state it is a possible IP address conflict.  When I typed the IP address into my browser it firstly loaded up ta page showing the printer settings (which I didn't amend in any way)...but when I've tried to do this again (on my Mac, iphone and ipad) they all state that the page could not be loaded as the server stopped responding.

Any help would be very gratefully received

[PrintDoc]

Turn the printer off and back on.  Does it connect?  You can print a Wireless Network Test from the front of the printer to see.

What router are you using?  From where did you get the HP software for your Mac?

[ClayJ]

Welcome to my world (and, it seems like lots of others)

See my post from a few days ago (HP Photosmart 5510 Printer - Wireless Network Connectivity Issues).

An update - I moved my printer to a different site, with IDENTICAL (down the the firmware rev levels) router and configuration; and, after a hardware reset, Bonjour recognizes it and all appears to be well.

The ONLY difference is that the printer is in the same room (about 4' away) from the router/AP in this location and was about 30' away through two sheets of drywall (wooden studs, NOT metallic) in the other location.

I'm going to be at my other site again in about 2 weeks and so will report what I find there; but, I suspect it's some sort of a subtle design flaw that HP will never admit.....

Anyone from HP want to chime in here?

Clay

[spokenmotion]

I'm using a TalkTalk router in the UK. The driver was downloaded from the hp website, as the install disc that came in the box didn't have Mac OSX Lion. Turning the printer off and on doesn't fix the issue. As I said, when the Wireless Network test page always confirms everything should be fine (I've printed out about 10 of these over the last few days). The blue light on the printer is steady, not flashing. The problem is as I described when when completing the installation process AFTER this Wireless Network Test page is printed, when the install wizard states the things mentioned on my earlier mail. Is it possibly something to do with the IP address?

[spokenmotion]

In relation to my initial question on this thread.... Sorry, to clarify in response to the person requesting details of my router, it is a Huawei Echolife HG521 The default IP password for the router was 192.168.1.1. I dont know if this has been changed since, but thats not something I would have done myself. The IP addres for my new HP printer is 192.168.1.7. I'd be extremely grateful if anyone could help me out here. I'm not a techie, but I am not a complete idiot either and it is really annoying me that doing something as simple as installing a wireless printer aimed at the commercial home market appears to have beaten me. Any assistance gratefully received.

[PrintDoc]

---

ClayJ wrote:

Welcome to my world (and, it seems like lots of others)

See my post from a few days ago (HP Photosmart 5510 Printer - Wireless Network Connectivity Issues).

An update - I moved my printer to a different site, with IDENTICAL (down the the firmware rev levels) router and configuration; and, after a hardware reset, Bonjour recognizes it and all appears to be well.

The ONLY difference is that the printer is in the same room (about 4' away) from the router/AP in this location and was about 30' away through two sheets of drywall (wooden studs, NOT metallic) in the other location.

I'm going to be at my other site again in about 2 weeks and so will report what I find there; but, I suspect it's some sort of a subtle design flaw that HP will never admit.....

Anyone from HP want to chime in here?

Clay

---

It could be wireless interference.  If you suspect this, try changing the channel on the router to 11.

[cjbalways]

I was wondering of you managed to sort your printer out. I'm having the same problem as you and I have the exact same router as you to. Please let me know what you did to sort it out, as I got the printer for Xmas because I wanted to print from my iPhone 4 and iPad but can't seem to.

[ClayJ]

Since my last post -

• I had a post in another thread censored
• I've tried the printer on my home network (same configuration) and was sucessfully able to connect, update the printer firmware and then connect wirelessly and print (from my Mac, did not try iPhone)- but, that was a temporary setup and I wasn't able to leave it all lashed up long enough to make sure things were fixed.
• Experienced similar issues with a DLink camera (loss of wireless connectivity).  
• Reset the SA520 to use a specific channel, rather than "auto"

I'm waiting now to see if my camera problem is fixed.   Interestingly enough, my wife has a DIFFERENT HP Photosmart printer and has been seeing the same flaky behavior.   I'll post the results here (and in the DLink forum) as I get something.   

I'm also going to be at my other site this weekend, and will be taking the printer with me to set up over there.  Hopefully, I'll get some "down time" to do some testing.

Clay

[cjbalways]

Thanks Clay got an IT man/friend coming over on Monday hopefully he will be able to fix what ever is going on. Such a shame as it was an Xmas present from my parents. I'm going to try and change the channel on the wifi box like some one suggested above and see If that works. We have managed to print one from the iPad and that was it. It's really temperamental. Good luck and speak soon :-)

[ClayJ]

So - here's my update.    After the printer worked at one site; I moved it to the other site and it didn't work.  Even when "connected" to the network (the wireless light was no longer blinking) it retained the WRONG IP address.   

So, I direct connected (USB) it to my Mac (latest OS X, I forget the animal name) and when I went to "Add Printer" it saw both the wired AND wireless printers.   I set 'em both up; and successfully from both. 

Next, I DISCONNECTED the USB cable.  Succesfully printed to the wireless printer.  The "wired" printer failed, of course.

Then, I unplugged and moved the printer to it's "normal" location - plugged it back in and successfully printed.

Turned off the Mac and did some other work for a few hours.   Turned the Mac back on, and tried printing again - this FAILED (the print queue manager says "Printer not connected" and eventually times out and wants to leave the printer offline.

From the router side, I can see the printer's MAC address connected to the (router) radio; and, I can see that it's got a DHCP address; but, I CANNOT print to it, and I cannot connect to the built-in web browser.  We had to leave before I was able to reconnect the USB cable and see if I could somehow "reset" somthing.

ANY ideas would be greatly appreciated.