HP OJ 9020 network printing failing due to bad port

[ThomasG-Retired]

I have a networked HP OJ 9020 printer that I cannot print to anymore. Even Print-Test-Page now fails. I've seen others across many forums reporting a similar problem. I think I have partially debugged the problem, and I hope HP can look at further.

The problem - since I moved my then-working HP OJ 9020 to a new static IP address, I opted to delete the existing printer entry in Printers & Scanners and create a new entry that would utilize the new IP address. Despite a successful install and new printer entry, Print-Test-Page resulted in a print error dialog, and errored print jobs in the 9020 queue. No manner of running the HP Print Scan Doctor, uninstalling/reinstalling various 9020 driver pages, rebooting, restarting the printer spooler and so resolved the "print" problem. I could however access the printer's UI with a web browser, and the printer driver install process was smart enough to detect my printer was password protected and get the password from me (i.e., network connectivity was working for all but printing).

The discovery - After much debugging, I see that HP OfficeJet Pro 9020 series > Printer properties > Ports shows a "WSD-3edccda64.........." port name, and when choosing Configure... on the port, it results in the error "An error occurred during port configuration. The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

A partial solution - When I manually created a "Standard TCP/IP Port" for my new static IP and associated that with my 9020 printer, both Print-Test-Page and printing from MS-Word starting working fine. However, after a few minutes the system would revert the 9020 port back to the broken WSD..... port. When I forced the 9020 port back to my TCP/IP port and quickly tried to delete the WSD..... port, I then got the error "Selected port cannot be deleted. The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

It appears the printing problem is unique to the WSD port created by the installation process. I also wonder if the delete/add printer and uninstall/reinstall driver steps are able to cleanup an abandoned WSD port and properly setup a new WSD port.

I have not yet jumped into regedit to manually blast the WSD port since whatever is reverting my 9020 port back to the WSD port might barf in yet another way.

Thomas Gilg

Retired HP

[ThomasG-Retired]

Ah, it seems Microsoft rolled out "WSD" ports as a supposed improvement over TCP/IP ports. and it's been biting people for years. MS hasn't fixed the problem, and HP hasn't yelled at MS enough.

The solution seems to be... fortunately the OJ9020 provides an option in its built-in web UI under Network > Advanced Settings > Microsoft Web Services where WS-Discovery, WSD Print and WSD Scan can be turned off, at which point Windows 10/11 will stop trying to migrate everyone off TCP/IP ports to WSD Ports every few minutes.

I am currently hand rolling my other PCs to use a TCP/IP port instead, since without WSD on in the printer, those other PCs now think the WSD-port/printer is just offline.

--tg