HP Photosmart Premium C310 Series crashing/rebooting constantly

[Spurll]

For the past several months (six, maybe? could be more) my printer has been crashing and rebooting every 5–10 minutes. This happens even when I am not using it for anything (although when it happens in the middle of printing something it's even worse).

The printer is on the wireless network. The reboot only happens when one of the two Windows 7 computers in the house is also on the network. If those machines are powered down, the reboot problem does not seem to occur. Connecting my MacBook or either of my two Ubuntu boxes has no effect. For this reason, I am led to believe that the problem is some interaction between Windows 7 and firmware on the device.

My firmware and drivers are up-to-date. I was hoping that I could find some way to roll back the printer firmware to the factory version and just turn off auto-updates to see if that would prevent the problem, but HP certainly doesn't make that easy.

I found a similar discussion in another thread (I don't believe that it's the same printer model, but I'm not sure). There was no solution: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-One-Install-Setup/HP-Photosmart-6525-rebooting-itself/t...

The printer has rebooted twice while I wrote this post. After working on this problem off-and-on for months, the only solution that I can come up with is to throw the printer away and never buy anything from HP again.

[Jamieson]

Hello Spurll, and welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience!

I see you are experiencing printer issues.  I would like to help.

I would recommend going into the network menu on the front of the printer, and selecting restore network defaults.  Once the defaults have been restored, I would recommend powering down your computer and printer.  Once they are both off, unplug the power cord from your wireless router, and plug it back in after 60 seconds.  After the router has begun broadcasting again, I would recommend utilizing the video below on 'Assigning a Static IP Address to Your Wireless HP Printer.'

Good luck and please let me know the results of your troubleshooting steps. Thank you for posting on the HP Forums!

[Spurll]

I followed the steps you suggested in the prescribed order, and there has been no change. The printer is still turning off unexpectedly and rebooting itself several times every hour.

[Jamieson]

Hi Spurll and thanks for the response.

I would recommend performing the following reset on the printer:

-Press the return arrow, home button, return arrow and home button, in sequence.

-Touch in the Support Menu.

-Press the right arrow until you see Reset Menu and press OK.

-Press Right arrow for Partial Reset and Touch OK.

-Wait for the printer to shut down.

-Press the power button to turn the Printer On.

After the reset, I would recommend following this video on Restarting the Print Spooler in Windows 7.

Please let me know how that goes.

[Spurll]

Hi, Jamieson. Perhaps I misunderstood your instructions, but I don't believe that I can do that.

My printer has a touchscreen (no physical buttons), and the Home button and Return arrow are disabled when on the home screen. I attempted to do what you suggested (return arrow, home button, return arrow, home button), but nothing happened. (Presumably because the buttons were not active.) I entered the settings screen, which caused both buttons to illuminate, and tried again, but as soon as I return to the home screen (after either the first return arrow press or the first home button press, depending on how deep in the menus I get before I start) the buttons are deactivated again, and nothing happens. Could you provide further clarification?

I tried restarting the print spooler on both Windows 7 machines connected to the network, but that does not seem to have solved the problem.

[Jamieson]

Hi Spurll,

I would recommend retrying the reset, even though the buttons are not lit up.  If it doesn't work, I would recommend contacting HP directly.  You can utilize this website to learn how to contact HP appropriately, based on your region: Contact HP Worldwide.

Thank you for posting on the HP Forums.

[Spurll]

Nope. Didn't work at all.

I called HP support, as suggested, and it has thus far proved a monumental waste of time. After two calls totalling more than two hours, HP customer support was unable to solve the problem.

They had me uninstall and reinstall all drivers and software (including all of their blasted bloat-ware for coupons.com and other such nonsense). They took remote control of one of my computers to poke around. I’d already done several of the things they suggested, such as setting a static IP. We but they checked again anyway. The printer continued to reboot about every 12 minutes or so throughout this process, whenever one of the Windows 7 machines was connected to the network. (We verified again that no such crashes happened when the machines were disconnected.)

They could find no cause for the problem, and suggested that it was a problem with my computer (some software or spyware that I have installed). They suggested that either I reformat both computers and start from scratch or that I pay a local technician to investigate. When I pointed out that this would be far more expensive that simply buying a new printer from a different company, I got the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Well, this printer was manufactured in 2011.” “Yes,” I replied. “A whole three years ago!”

“We uninstalled all of the software, sir,” I was told. “There is no more communication between the printer and the computer.” When I pointed out that this was obviously untrue, given that the problem only occurs when one of the Windows 7 machines is online, I was told, “That’s why we think that it’s some software on your computer, sir.”

When I suggested that there may be a problem with the printer firmware, I was told that that was impossible, because I was still able to print from my Mac, which I wouldn’t be able to do if there were a problem with my firmware. I responded that that’s a very narrow view of what a “firmware problem” might entail, and the fellow with technical support (whose name was Ronald) replied that the firmware didn’t really have anything to do with printing, and only ran the front panel display anyway.

I laughed a hollow, sad laugh, realizing that this fellow obviously had no idea what was going on, and attempted to explain that the firmware is responsible for translating instructions from the computer into discrete actions, controlling the operation of the printing hardware itself, and in this case would probably be responsible for handling things like network communication. He admitted that he was out of ideas, and escalated the case to their software engineering team.

The whole time, all I can think of is this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

I eagerly await their call.

[mikeindc]

Yea, HP "help" is a bit of a misnomer.  I have the same problem.  its not related to the computer because it does it even when the computer is turned off.  I have performed the reset, etc.  It does SEEM to happen more when I am printing several different documents.  Of course they are usually one page, all text.  It doe NOT have a problem with a 50 page document filled with text and lotf of grahics.It will sometimes do it completely randomly.  I will frequently go by the printer and see the message that it was shut down incorrectly, and since I didn't shut it down and the power did not go off, I know that printer shut rebooted itself.

Its a shame because overwise I like the printer/scanner.  It just annoying that it reboots so much of the time and I havd to then wait for the device to come back up.