HP Network Printer

[plschley]

I have a network HP LaserJet printer that's networked along with many more. The IP address on this printer was accidently changed. I told her no big deal, I'll get the IP address off the printer server. Out of all the 37 network printers I have, this is the only printer that for the IP address has HPLaserJet-Bla-Bla-Bal in the blank. Not the IP. How can I or can I retrieve the IP? If I can’t, can I update to a new IP on the printer and print server? Will users have to re-install?

[SHThompson]

If you're printing by hostname instead of IP then you can ping the host name and you'll get the IP address back.

As in ping LaserJet blah blah blah

[SHThompson]

Quick follow-up there's a couple other methods one is to use LaserJet web jetadmin and do a discovery on your network. The drawback of this is that once webjet admin is running it always starts up and runs in the background if you're monitoring a fleet you probably want to have it installed on a server anyway.

My favorite is the old download manager program which was to update jetdirect firmware but it will go out and discover all the Jetdirects on the network and report back the IP addresses. Download manager only runs when you choose to start it.

[plschley]

Thank you for your reply Mr. Thompson.  Can you clarify a bit? 

With either method you indicated, wont I see the IP of what is now installed on the network printers and not what’s listed in the Ports IP tab in the server? I would like to be able to see what the properties are on the sever under Devices and Printers> Ports. Here if I could see the IP I could re-install it on the printer.  

I have all my printers on a 192.168.5 network. When I looked at the HP printer IP on that printer, it's some random 192.240.xxx.xxx number. The Ports tab  on the server shows the IP address as HPLaserJet-Bla-Bla-Bal in the blank. That is the number I would like to be revealed. I don’t like that HP changed this not to show the IP to be honest.

Would either monitoring devices you specified work with any other printing vendors? I only have a few HP Printers. I have mostly Ricoh. Thank you again for being so fast. I'm trying to get ready for Monday morning. 

[plschley]

I didn't see this and replied to your other post.  What a great idea.  Just grab that "port ID" and ping it? 

[SHThompson]

You will see what's on the network and it looks like your printer has an IP address that it assigned itself when it didn't get a DHCP address.

And the way it's done on the server isn't necessarily because HP did it that way it may be something that Windows is doing. Are you using the HP driver downloaded from the HP website or just a generic driver that Windows already had?

Sometimes you just set things up to print by host name that way you can actually move the PC and printer to another Network and they still work that's more handy though for portable devices. Some people prefer this method because then they don't have to worry about the IP address of the printer they just let the printer work by DHCP and the network sort out where the printer actually is.

If you were set to print by host name then all you need to do is manually assign the printer an IP address that works with your network and the rest should sort itself out.

[plschley]

The printer was installed before my time.  I would have to look at the driver. I thought it was a PCL6  or a HP Universal Print Driver.  I will know better tomorrow.  I happy as all get out about the port ping. Great idea.

[plschley · Accepted solution]

I found the solution. I tried to ping as you suggested but that didn’t work. I received no reply. I then went to the printer on the server, Devices and Printers> Print Properties of the printer in question> Ports and click the Configure Port tab. There was the IP. Thank you for your assistance just the same. Now, off to the races…..

[SHThompson]

I was actually thinking about that but until I got a chance to sit down at a PC and review I wasn't going to give you another step.

Personally I don't like to accept the default Port games because they do contain an IP address and IP addresses can change. The port name once it's assigned can not be changed you have to delete it and recreate it if you want a port with a different name.

I remember helping a customer many years back where they were looking at the Port name that showed an IP address which matched the printer IP address but they couldn't print. It turned out that when you click configure Port you saw that the actual IP address of the port was different from the IP showing in the name.

[plschley]

I changed it to the IP i found and it does print. I'm a hapy boy! One less thing today.