how to prevent a neverstop 1200w laser printer from shutting down?

[stefanobarni]

after some hours of inactivity, my 1200w laserjet printer shuts down. To print or scan again from my laptop I have to touch the on/off button of the printer. Apparently, queueing print jobs to the laptop printer queue does not wake the printer up. The printer appears to be off from the wireless network (a lan scanner does not find it), and this happens though I have reserved an address to it in my router dhcp configuration. This behaviour does not change whether the ip address of the printer is set statically or through dhcp.

the problem does not concerns the sleep feature. I see that after a minute or so of inactivity, the printer dims the toner level light and the panel leds, but if I launch a print or open the scan utility, it responds promptly.

I understand that shutting down is a power saving feature, but the need to physically be near the printer when I need to print is a really bugging annoyance.

In the setup menu of the printer there is an "Energy Settings" section, but it only allows to set the shutdown delay from 1 to 8 hours. Is there a way to disabling it permanently?

thank you for any help

stefano barni

[Valsimot]

The printer goes to Auto OFF after 8 hours ( if you set 8 hours or less ) of inactivity. Not possible to disable that feature.

[stefanobarni]

Hi, thank you for your reply. Now I know that I did not miss the right option in the menus.

Now, is there a workaround to wake up the printer remotely?

the problem is worse than I figured out at first. When the printer goes off, touching the on/off button on the panel is not enough. Though it does some noise and the lights are fully lit again, the printer still cannot be found by ip on the wifi network and its web interface does not respond.

I need to turn it off and the on again.

The wifi blue indicator stays steady blue all the time, so this does not make sense.

thank you

stefano

[Valsimot]

https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04183583 

Is Auto-Off the same setting as sleep mode?

No. Auto-Off, sometimes called Power Save Mode, turns the printer completely off after a set period of time (usually two hours). You must press the power button to turn the printer back on.

You can probably find solutions on Google on how to keep printer out of sleep / auto off with SNMP

[stefanobarni]

I think I know the difference between sleep and shut down. they are separately configurable through the printer web interface.

the sleep mode is not a problem, it is entered by the printer after about a minute of inactivity. when sleeping, the printer is available on the network and I can print and scan from my mac.

the problem arises when the printer shuts down. it disappears from the network, but it apparently it is still on, because the toner level indicator, the on/off button and the blue wifi light are on. So, it is not a true shutdown.

What does not make sense at all, is that if I touch the on/off button, the printer apparently wakes up, it makes some noise and seems to be ready, but it is not visible on the network anyway. It looks like when it exits the shutdown state it does not resume its network configuration.

in order to have it ready and visible on the wifi net again, I have to turn it off (all lights off) and then turn it on.

I hate this behaviour (because I want to manage my devices the way I want, not the way their producer thinks it's best for me) and I find its implementation absolutely buggy (because if the printer shuts down, then it should turn it off for good and turn off its light indicators, so that it is clear it needs to be turned on again).

If a solution to this problem cannot be found, I will consider returning the printer and this will be the last hp device in my life.

Sorry for the rant, I sincerely appreciate your will to help and your time... but I really don't see why I should bother with snmp, when all I want from my printer is that it prints when I queue a print - if I did not turn it off explicitly. Producers should learn not to think on behalf of their customers and leave full control to them.