How do I enable keep-alive on HP Officejet Pro 8600?

[Rusty48]

How do I keep the 8600 on line.  It just keeps going off line.

[8lives]

@Rusty48, did you try any of the suggestions made by VisionAiry in her latest post? (message #157)

[VisionAiry]

Thank you 8 lives! You will find some more random suggestions in that message, but here is a direct link more organized for the beginner troubleshooter:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-Networking-and-Wireless/Printer-Will-Not-Respond-To-Touch-and-N...

[IslipHP]

Well, I spent quite a while with HP Support last week restarting my 'Case' from late last year - they had closed it because they had given me a work round, i.e. turn off 'Sleep' mode'. The printer stayed connected on LAN, but not on wireless, but obviously never 'slept'.

Eventually I was put onto a support desk in the North East and they said that there is a solution to the problem of the printer losing connection with the network when 'asleep' - for both wireless and LAN.

The solution they suggested is a 'Semi-Full Reset'. I was talked through it last week and they rang back after 24 hours to see if the printer was still responding, which it was, and almost 1 week later it still is!

If you do this Semi-Full Reset you will need to set up the printer again from scratch - time, date, network etc., so make sure you have all the network settings to hand before you start.

I have the printer set on a 'Static IP' address, but the BT Router does not have static IP, so that is still on its default DHCP. This is the only change to the default set-up that I use.

Make sure you have at least 1 piece of paper in the tray as the reset process prints out an alignment test page.

To do the Semi-Full Reset:

• Touch the screen on Copy, can be any of the selections, and you will see a 'House' at the top lefthand side of the screen and a 'Return Arrow' at the bottom left.

        Remember where the return arrow is as you will need to press it 4 times, but not be able to see it!

• Press on the 'House' and it and the return arrow both disappear.

• Press where the 'Return Arrow' was 4 times - if successful you will get the 'Support Menu' screen.

• When you have the 'Support Menu' click on it to select it, and you will presented with a screen with a support  reference and an illuminated arrow either side of the screen.

• Press the 'Right' arrow twice and you will get the 'Resets Menu', click 'OK'.

• You will get a screen with 'Country/Language Reset' and again an illuminated arrow either side of the screen.

• Press the 'Right' arrow twice and you will get the 'Semi-Full Reset' option, click 'OK' to start the reset.

It takes about 10 minutes to complete the reset, and after that you will need to set up all the options you need, including the wireless network settings.

I have deliberately left it on 'wireless' only and have selected the 'Sleep' option of 'After 5 minutes'. So far that has worked perfectly. If I send a print to the printer it wakes up and prints, and if I want to copy, just need to touch either the screen or the 'Power' button very briefly to wake it up.

When 'Asleep' the wireless indicator light stays on 'blue', and the 'Power' button slowly drifts between being illuminated and off.

Is this really the answer? I truly hope so after months of unsatisfactory response from HP.

[akcaksk]

After days of searching, the problem has been solved finally! I applied the following steps below. Some of the steps may be unnecessary, I didnt want to waste my time to figure out which.

1 Find your PC DNS servers by typing ipconfig /all in CMD.
2 Assign a static IP outside your DHCP range. For my Linksys router the range is between 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.150. So I set my static IP as 192.168.1.20.

To do this, hit the wireless button on your printer. This will show your printer's current IP. Type this to your browser. Go network/networking/network address. Choose manual IP and write 192.168.1.20

3 Now come to manual DNS server section and type your DNS servers you found before.

4 Open your HP Printer program which should be installed together with your driver. Hit utilities and update IP address. Update your address with your static IP.

5 Now go to your router settings. Locate wireless settings and change your radio band to 20 MHz standard not automatic.

6 Change your standard channel to 6.

7 Locate wireless security and change your security mode to WPA-Personal.

8 Disable UPnP

9 This is the KEY part. Change your key renewal to 36000 secs. (10 hours)

10 Go to Windows Firewall advanced settings. Enable all disabled printer and share ,inbound and outbond rules.
I believe the most important parts are setting a static IP outside your DHCP range and changing the key renewal time. I hope it works for you too

[Networked]

I have been successful, after three months of trying, in getting the printer to maintain a conneciton.  I have done the following:

1) Set the printer to never sleep.  I don't think this is the key change, but i don't have time to switch it off and see if it is necessary.  Instructions for doing this are buried some pages back in this or a smilar forum; I can re-post them if there is a need.

2) Set the printer to a static IP address.  My router does not have static IP addresses, but allows an "IP reservation," which accomplishes the same thing.

3) Followed insructions from akcaksk, previous page in this forum, steps #5 & #6 -- set the bandwidth to 20MHz and the channel to 6.  I *did not* do the remainder of the instructions.   I had previously switched of Universal Plug & Play (UPnP), which is a security hole at any rate, and should be switched off.

This last change appears to be working.  We've had the printer operational for about a week without losing connection.

[VisionAiry]

I am very glad to hear that!!  Thank you for coming back to the forums to let us know what worked.

Happy Printing!

[gdollar]

Hi Visionary, We have had several discussions on this topic and you have been very helpful. I have had a lot of experience with this printer now and I still believe there is an underlying cause of this problem. I have had two routers, Lynksys and Comcast and the results are identical, I do use a fixed IP address on both modems. I know you have heard me say this before but I never have a problem ,ever, printing with an iPad, Android phone, my computer on Win 7 and my company computer running XP, never ever do they disconnect from the printer. My three other computers running XP (older computers) always disconnect from the printer after a period of time and have to be rebooted. Clearly this is not an issue with the printer going to sleep otherwise all devices would suffer the same issue. The printer has been running for well over six months and has been amazingly consistent.

So, I think there's something that the individual computers do or that software loaded that runs in the background does to the system. The focus of all the threads has been the type of router used but I think if progress is to be made everyone should state the following

1. Modem type

2. Operating systems. Do Mac's suffer the same problems as XP?

3. Virus checker used and whether they are programmed on demand or run on a weekly/Daily basis etc.

4. Do phones and tablets with ePrint work every time but computers do not.

5. How long does your computer hold onto the printer. Is there coincidence with the virus checker, as mine does on the XP's that fall off.

It's hard to see commonality in all the folks that reply to the thread. It's maybe because of my science training that I can't read all these inputs and issues without seeing the full picture. I think Visionary can pull all this together if we give her all our data.

I don't think all of these probelms are in the printer domain but we keep blaming it. I think that HP have sold a lot of these 8600 printers from what I can tell and the number of complaints are pretty thin. That said HP is not helping here but I can't see what the sales/complaint ratio is.

gdollar

[VisionAiry]

Thank you so much gdollar! I have remained on the forums even after my release from working directly for HP.  Now whether this is true or not, I recall being told it had something to do with the wireless card (don't quote me on that because half the stuff I was told to say I hardly believed myself) and that an Ethernet connection straight to the modem was the fix. However I feel that may not always be the case but I still continued to tackle this head on and still do at my current job (service technician)...so to recap, give me the following information and I will share with you my knowledge of your configuration.  

1. Modem type

2. Operating systems. Do Mac's suffer the same problems as XP?

3. Virus checker used and whether they are programmed on demand or run on a weekly/Daily basis etc.

4. Do phones and tablets with ePrint work every time but computers do not.

5. How long does your computer hold onto the printer. Is there coincidence with the virus checker, as mine does on the XP's that fall off.

Yes, it would be important to know if Mac users suffer the same issues (thank you for your thoughts on that).  It should not take a rocket scientist to allow you to print wirelessly 24/7 but I will do my best...guaranteed  🙂

[Tom1004]

I have the HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 Preminum with the eprint, etc. I have had this problem for a week starting the day I replaced my D-Link DIR-657 with a D-Link DRI-826L.

I have solved it 2 ways. As below

#1 With a D-Link DIR-826L Router at the SETUP page selecting, IPv6 and then Manual SETUP I unchecked AUTOMATIC Address.  The 8600 worked OK for 3 days and never became disconnected.

#2 I re-enabled the AUTOMATIC IPv6 address. Then in the 8600 on screen setup I set the 8600 Network Protocol to IPv4 Only.  It has been connected for 2 hours.

#3 UPDATE - now after 3 weeks the printer has not disconnected.

Until I got IPv6 out of the picture I had to power down and re-power 8600 if it was not used within a minute.