'You Are Not Using The Correct Type of Phone Cord' Error

[Grandma48]

Deanna:  Sorry I don't get on here unless I have a problem.  But yes you plug the phone cord into the back of the modem where it says phone line.  One more thing remove features like call forward and especially voice mail or your fax will not work properly.  I hope you were able to resolve your problem before now but if not I hope this helps.:smileyhappy:

[queenbee271]

Thank you it worked and you saved me from buying a new cord 🙂

[Zaynn]

Thank so much for this fix - I was begginning to lose the will to live!

It must be a fault with the firmware or the pass thru' phone socket on my 8600, but removing the phone cable to the extension worked, so now I will run the extension from a(nother) phone splitter - not pretty but it works!

Thanks again!

Alan
Southampton, UK

HP Officejet 8600 Plus

[dwhit70]

You are brilliant!  After hours/days of trouble shooting, the scotch tape over the outer two wires worked!   So glad I found your post!  Didn't want to order the adapter not knowing if it would work or not. Now I know!

[Jarster]

so I just purchased an HP Office Jet Pro 8620 and it had this same issue.  The supplied cord is not long enough so I connected the supplied black phone cable to a phone extension wire that had 4 conductors via a coupler, and the FAX test passed.  A two conductor wire must be used, ridiculous !

Amazon doesn't sell a 2 conductor stright through phone extension cable longer than a couple of feet, thus i'm stuck using a coupler, not a great setup.

[Grandma48]

You can get a 2 wire phone cord in various lengths at www.cordsforphones.com   Someone posted this link several posts back in this thread and it was a life saver for me!    Hope this helps.

[S6V]

Thanks for the tips regarding a two wire cord. I needed additional length beyond the short cord provided with the 8620 as well.

I took a standard 25 foot 4-wire phone line that was in-hand and laying around, stripped the outer covering, snipped the outside wires (black and yellow), covered that spot with electrical tape for good measure, and the fax function works perfectly. 

It would be a good thing if HP mentioned somewhere in their documentation that a two-wire phone line was required, advised as to where these can be bought, and coached-up their support folks on this issue.

[rossmck]

I agree with the rest. It is absurd that the HP Officejet Pro doesn't work with a standard 4-wire phone jack. I just reorganized my home office, moving my Officejet away from the jack, so I used a standard 20-foot 4 wire phone cord and, suddenly, my home phones would not ring (even though they had dial tones). There is definitely hardware design issue here. And HP's support is as bad as the design.  Isn't it frustrating when vendors provide a forum like this and then don't take the time to monitor it?

That said, the offered solution of buying a long, 2-wire cord (if you can find it) is one solution. Another solution is connecting your long 4-wire cord to a readily available female-female phone cord coupler which joins two phone cords. Then you can put your long 4-wire cord in series with the HP-supplied 2-wire cord (or any other 2-wire cord you might have). Here are two links:

http://www.amazon.com/Softalk-04328-Connector-Telephone-Accessory/dp/B000V99KF6/ref=sr_1_8/184-73996...

http://www.radioshack.com/radioshack-in-line-phone-coupler-ivory/2790024.html#q=phone%2Bcord%2Badapt...

A third solution is to stick a standard phone line splitter into the back of the fax machine or into your phone jack. These spltters take a 4-wire line and split it into two 2-line lines. Then, plug your 4-wire phone cord into line 1 of the splitter and your fax machine will not be connected to line 2.  Here is a link for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Phone-Splitter-Separator-Adaptor-Sockets/dp/B00QQU0DAA/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronic...

http://www.radioshack.com/radioshack-2-line-3-way-jack-adapter-white/2790006.html#q=2-line%2Bphone%2...

[mnmarcus]

Proper 2-wire cords are readily available in many lengths and even custom lengths. http://www.cordsforphones.com/coso2licohpf.html

[mnmarcus]

http://www.cordsforphones.com/coso2licohpf.html