Printer stops communicating

[dnewport]

I bougth a new HP Envy 7640 recently and I installed it wirelessly. Yesterday I had to reboot my router and PC and now I can't get the printer to communicate. I have tried rebooting but that's no good. The IP address has changed since the router reboot although the printer seems to be happy to display the new IP address. When I use the HP Print and Scan doctor and try and print a test page and then  hit NO PRINT, it hangs.  Can anyone help ?

[Bob_Headrick]

There a few things to try:

• Get the IP address from the printer and enter it in your browser.  Does this open the printer's Embedded Web Server (EWS)?  If so it indicates the PC and printer are on the same network and able to communicate.
• On your PC go to the Devices and Printers folder.  Right click on your printer and select Printer Properties, Ports, Add Port, HP Standard TCP/IP Port, New Port, Next, (put the IP address in the "Printer Name or IP Address" box, check the "Always print to this device even if its IP address changes", Next.  Continue on and apply the new port settings.

It may help to set a static IP address on the printer so there will not be an issue if the IP address changes and the PC cannot find it.  You could do this from the printer's EWS.  Click the Network tab, select IPv4 on the left side.  Click the Manual IP bubble and select an appropriate IP address - you want something above or below the DCHP address range of the router.  For example, if your current IP address is 192.168.1.13 a good address might be something like 192.168.1.199.  The subnet mask would typically be 255.255.255.0 for a home network.  The manual default gateway would normally be the IP address with .1 in the last position.  Alternately you could click the Suggest and Manual IP address button.  For the DNS Address Configuration section you can click the Manual DNS Server button and put in the Google DNS server addresses, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, Apply.  At this point the browser will lose communication with the printer, you will need to enter the new IP address in the browser to see the new connection.

[dnewport]

Thanks for the info. In order to get it working I entered a static IP address (the one it had before I rebooted the router and PC) and that fixed it. I did that before you mentioned it. One thing I didn't do was specify the Google DNS but that does not seem to matter.

Interestingly, when I bring up the Devices and Printers from the control panel, I see my HP ENVY but when I click on it and go to the menu on the right mouse button, each menu item, Set Whats Printing, Printer Properties, Printer Preferences etc etc all have two entries for my HP ENV printer.

Any idea why that should be and how to clean it up ?

Cheers.

[Bob_Headrick]

There is an issue with assigning the previous IP address for the printer as a static IP - if this address is within the DCHP address range it may be assigned to a different device at some point, resulting in a network error about multiple devices with the same IP address.  It would be best to assign an IP address outside the normal DCHP range to avoid this future possibility.  Aternately, your router may have the capability to permanantely assign a MAC address to an IP Address.  On my Actiontec C1000A this is found in the Advanced Setup, DCHP Reservation area on the router.

As for the multiple devices showing up, this can happen if you have installed the device multiple times on the same port.  To get rid of one of these first split them - right click on the Envy 7640, select Printer Properties, select the one you want to get rid of.  When the printer properties dialog opens select Ports, select an unused port such as LPT1:, Apply.

This will now separate the two copies of the printer.  Refresh the Devices and Printers folder, the right click on the now visible extra copy of the Envy 7640 and select Remove Device.  Confirm this, the extra will be gone.

[dnewport]

I have not yet assigned it an IP address outside the DHCP client range at the moment and I have not specified the Google DNS but it seems happy to accept the static IP address I have assigned. but I will remember your advice in case of future problems. Also I don't feel like rebooting my router and everything else again. I have multiple networks and it can be a hassle sometimes. That's not to say I don't appreciate your advice.

As to the 2nd issue, when I followed your advice about the port, I could delete the "new" version of the printer but then the default one became unusable. So I deleted that as well and reinstalled the device and now it's OK and working as the default device.

I still find these things amazing. I have been a SW engineer for 38 years now but generally on Unix/Linux types of large industrial systems. But I still have some idea about PC stuff.  Even so, I have problems such as this. What happens to the poor granny or the man in the street who sees a PC as just another household appliance. They must be really screwed sometimes. End of rant 🙂

Thanks for your help.