HP Photosmart 7510 goes to sleep and doesn't wake up

[hedgert]

The 7510 is a nice printer that works very well - for about 15 minutes, until it goes to sleep.

Then mostly it doesn't work.  You have to turn the printer off then on again to wake it up and use it.

A couple of scenarios:

1 - leave the printer for some time, until it sleeps, then go to your Mac and try and print something - the Mac HP printer software can't connect to the printer.  Turn the printer off then on again, and hey presto the printer can be found and you can print

2 - print a large document so that the printer runs out of paper and go and make a cup of coffee.  Come back, print half done, out of paper.  Printer is asleep - no amount of pressing buttons wakes it up again.  Look at the printer software on the Mac and the print queue is empty - the whole document has been sent to the printer.  Because you can't wake the printer up, turn it off then on again to bring it back to life.  Put paper in it, the printer is empty - the unprinted half of the document that has gone from the print queue on the Mac, is lost.  Sort through the pages, work out which pages are required and print them again - oh and of course this time make sure you don't try to print more pages than paper fits in the printer.

In short the software in the printer is not fit for purpose - when the printer goes to sleep, no amount of pressing buttons on the display will wake it up again - that's a bug.  Possibly the HP printer software on the Mac is at fault too - if the printer is asleep, shouldn't the print software be able to wake it up?  And if the document is only half printed, why isn't the unprinted half still on the print queue.

The printer is nearly new - but this HP site is hard to use - so I can't find out how to raise a warranty call - hoping a fellow user may have had and solved this problem.  As it stands the printer is fit for the dustbin.

[SeanS]

Hedgert, What version of OS X are you running?

In the mean time check out this document: The HP Product Won't Turn On or Respond

[msklein]

I have the same problem. If I do not use the printer for a few days it becomes unresponsive. The power light shows bright and then dim but pressing the button has no impact. Only pulling the plug will restart the printer. The blue network light is on solide as well. The sleep feature is not selected. I am using Windows 7 and an HP dv7-3080us laptop. I hope HP corrects this problem soon.

[robertlsmi]

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SeanS wrote:

Hedgert, What version of OS X are you running?

In the mean time check out this document: The HP Product Won't Turn On or Respond

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Sean...  This link does NOT address the problem.  The problem is not that the printer won't turn on when the power button is pressed, the problem is that: 1.  The ##$%! thing won't wake up from it's Sleeping Beauty state when a print or any other job is sent to it. and 2.  It won't shutdown by use of the power button when in this state of catatonia!  Noting that the owner's manual SPECIFICALLY discourages shutting down the printer by pulling the plug, which if NOT restarted in this way, you will NEVER use it again.

This is UNSAT and it is a carry over from my 6500 which ultimately became a several hundred dollar paper weight as I attempted to rectify it's tendency to become Snow White as well.  One would think that Hewlett Packard could do better than this.  I recall my Navy electronics training in the 60s, HP was the ONLY acceptable frequency, voltage or any other standard, such performance is a DISGRACE to such a once respected company.  I have spent nearly a thousand dollars (maybe more) on HP printers over the years and each one had a problem such as this, it seems only to get worse and worse, now you can't use them at all!  At least before there were work arounds, appaling as they were.  HP has gotten my last dollar.

Bob Smith

[ForthOK]

I have had my HP Photosmart 7510 for a few months and it just started to exhibit this problem in the past few weeks.  A number of Google searches have turned up many users with this same issue. 

After the printer is asleep for some amount of time (from minutes to hours), it is no longer responsive to the touch panel or to network communication.  The blue LED is on solid and the white LED is pulsating (normal LEDs for sleep mode). 

In the discussion above, people keep asking "which OS are you using" but what does it matter?  The problem is clearly in the printer (which stands alone) not in the computer.  I have a mix of OS X 10.8, Windows 7, Windows 8... None of them can print to or scan from the HP Photosmart 7510 after it has gone into this dead-sleep mode. Note that the power button does work; I don't need to unplug the unit to get it to restart. 

Has anyone found a solution to this?

[msklein]

Many people have posted this issue but I have found nothing official from HP to correct this problem. I have found success changing the sleep timer to a longer value. I believe the default is five minutes and I move it up one notch to thirty minutes. I have not had the problem in months with this change. The change is made from the printer itself under one of the tools menus. I do not use the printer very often and before this change it would happen on a regular basis. Hope this helps.....

[ForthOK]

Where do you see a 30 minute sleep timeout?  Mine offers "Energy Save" after 5, 10, or 15 minutes.  Currently set to 15.  I wish it offered "Never".

[WilliamHerschel]

No solution unfortunately - just to add my experience with a Photosmart. I stopped using it because there is no way of disabling the of the auto-off feature. The slightly irritating rote response of HP employees and others of - go to printer / properties /  turn off auto-off mode - does not work and never will. It's a design 'feature' which HP in their wisdom built in. I just got fed up with the hassle and dumped it for a printer that stays on.

[ForthOK]

This solution worked for me:  Check if Web Services are enabled.  If they're not, then enable them.  If you get a timeout and it can't connect (and can't enable web services), check your IP and DNS settings.  Use a fixed DNS address.  (I chose the Google DNS project's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).  After I enabled web services, it now goes to sleep normally and wakes up again automaticall as needed.

[WilliamHerschel]

Unfortunately my Photosmart does not have a Web Services option (it's too old). However I was motivated to have another go at the problem. There was a suggestion that pinging the printer every 10 seconds or so would keep it alive - I tried it and it doesn't. My second attempt was to request the printer attributes every ten seconds - this too does not keep the printer alive. I could print a blank sheet of paper every 15 minutes or so but that's getting rediculous.