HP Printer freezing after some time

[MarkSquared]

HP Laserjet Pro MFP M225 keeps freezing overnight. The only way to fix it is to power off the printer and power it back on and then it works for a number of hours.  The next day, the screen is frozen.  I have updated the firmware, no luck.  I have reset the printer to factory as well, no luck.   I am using this printer as a local printer connected via TCPIP.  I have it hard wired into my router.  Any assitance would be appreciated. 

[John_Getzke]

Describe what you mean when you say "frozen".

Considering the printer starts responding after a reboot I would assume your problem is a network configuration issue.  Some networks are configured to clean up IP addresses after a ceratain time frame of inactivity.  No IP = No network connectivity = the impression of a frozen printer. Thankfully the solution to that is to setup the printer with a static IP Address outside of the DHCP pool.  That or disable the feature that attempts to clean up old DHCP devices on your network.  I think static IPs are easier and better documented.

A quick test for you to help us confirm.  Jot down the current IP of the printer when it is working.  Wait 24 hours for the problem to occur again.  Ping the IP of the printer and see if there is a response.  Reboot the printer.  Check and see if the IP address changes or not.

The IP should be the same for your PC and mobile devices to find the printer.  Any funny business in this area will disable connectivity to the printer.

[MarkSquared]

Hi John thanks for your reply, I waited 24 hours and now it shows offline on my printers. I tried pinging it and it pings. I also rebooted the printer and the same ip address is assigned. 

Pinging 192.168.1.15 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.1.15: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.1.15: bytes=32 time=843ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.1.15: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.1.15: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.15:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 843ms, Average = 216ms

[John_Getzke]

Hmmm.

If the IP Address isnt changing and the IP is responding to the network when you ping it that would suggest the printer is still connected and chatting with the network.  That or somethign else temporarily hijacks the IP, but if that happened there would be an IP address conflict and both devices would stop working.

This all suggests a problem with the printer itself.  Normally I would point the finger at Sleep Mode on the printer.  However, sleep mode usually causes the printer to stop responding to the network unless the printer model has a "Wake on LAN" feature.

Searching through the specs I am not finding a mention of the "Wake on LAN" feature:

https://store.hp.com/us/en/hp-laserjet-pro-mfp-m225dw

That puts us back in the camp of a competing sleep mode feature on the printer.  With my personal M102w  (wifi connected) I have to walk over and reboot the printer every time it sits unused for 4 hours or more.  However, the printer doesnt respond to the network when it goes to sleep so I'm more confident of a printer feature causing the problem than in your case.

To check on the Sleep Mode feature you should be able to sign into the printers EWS (Embedded Web Server) by typing the IP address of the printer into a web browser.  Log in and then review the various tabs to find the sleep mode setting.  My m102 only allows a max of 4 hours before it goes to sleep.  Perhaps your model allows you to disable or extend the sleep window.  Once you set or confirm the sleep window then run another experiment to see if the problem occurs after that time limit is hit or not.

If we find that sleep mode is defective then all we can do is attempt to reset the printer to defaults.  After that we would either have to accept this as a limit of the printers functionality or pursue misc hardware replacements.  Not really sure what a printer tech would want to repair for somethign like this unless we could find an error message in the event logs or soemwhere else to point us to a failing component.

[imthinking]

I am having the same porblem with my HP 6525. Started right after their security update a few months ago. Likely bad code in the HP. I had a similar problem on my router years ago and no one could figure out what the cause was. Until one day one of the developers encountered it at home. Ends up the internal drivers of the device did not handle certain states or external radio settings (don't remember which) and the router radio didn't realize it. So the device with the radio thinks all is well, but it isn't. Turning off/on the device (or the radio if you have that control on your printer) sometimes helps temporarily. However other items sometimes break along the way (e.g., fax to PC). Likely nothing to do until HP realizes it has a bug and fixes their internal drivers (which usually takes time due to the standard support process of identifying it as somebody else's fault and give the user tons of useless instructions on upgrading or starting their PC, and everything else but fixing the printer code.

[imthinking]

Also, the HP solutions will not work. They drive you down a path to restart the printer and router, which only temporarily fixes the issue until the next day.

And the Print and Scan Dr eithers says all is good (when the printer is up) or can't find the printer (24 hours later). Neither of which fixes the problem.

[John_Getzke]

The way to isolate a problem down to something like a wireless issue is to first test the same sceanrio over the other connection techniques.  If you can reproduce the same problem over USB and Ethernet Cable then you know its not a wireless problem.

For network problems you also need to consider that the home router is playing a role in the connection scenario.  The best cases will test the same situation with a few different home routers to see if it impacts them all the same way or if only a certain manufacturer or model triggers the problem. 

If you can get that kind of specific isolated information then the next step is to open a case with HP and work with the reps.  They are only going to escalate issues for models with current or extended support.  Otherwise any issues may get passed on to the next model where the current developement resources are.

[Imagecomputer]

My spidey sense is making me think that you have a hardware issue with the formatter board.  This reminds me of a very widespread problem years ago with the P3005 printer.  Print off an email at 5pm on Monday, no problems.  Come in Tuesday morning, printer is frozen.  Still pings, but control panel is unresponsive, and won't print anything until you cycle the power.  I've probably replaced a hundred of those formatters myself, and sold hundreds more.

Given that you've alredy updated the firmware, it can't be much else besides the formatter.  If this were my printer, I'd be trying a formatter.  The part number is cz231-60001.

Good Luck!

Matt

 Image Computer Corporation

[hyperpixel]

Just curious - for anyone - are you using genuine HP cartidges?