why does my printer go into sleep mode and is there any way to bring it back besides turning off/on

[David128]

The printer is new. Works fine except for this issue.  Hate not having a regular old fashion paper manual for these type of questions.

[John_Getzke]

Pritners will go to sleep to retain certain energy star ratings.  You want your printer to opperate in low power mode when it is not needed.  Waking up is a matter of sending the right kind of command to the printer.

Chances are you are connected to the printer over the network.  In that case perhaps the printer is getting dropped due to inactivity by your network configuration.  Once you repower the printer a network connection request is received which refreshes the connection and allows you to print.  Confirm if this is  a network print scenario or not for more suggestions.

[David128]

This is a network printer

[John_Getzke]

Thanks for the confirmation.

Next step is to rig up a test to confirm if its the printer or the network configuration that is the problem.

Try setting up a ping script to talk to your printer at various increments.  The easiest ping script you can run would be a simple Ping <printer IP> -t to run a continous ping from a command prompt and network connected machine.  This continous ping should keep the printer responding and frehs no the network, delaying and disabling its sleep functionality.

Run the ping command for a while and check up on it incrementally.  Narrow down how long it takes before the problem occurs.  Is it 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30, 60, hours?

Advanced ping scripts can be created with a little creative programming.  A custom ping script such as something written in .vbs could send single ping commands at various intervals.  Another trick would be to use Task Scheduler and .bat files.  Task Scheduler can control the timing by launching the ping command or a ping script/file for you.

Once you know how long it takes for the problem to occur then you can start looking through your network configuration for clues.  It might be a setting on your home router, firewall or something else in your environment.