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jabzi
Level 13
‎11-23-2020 11:24 AM
Views : 60,347
68% helpful (23/34)
Hi all,
If you are experiencing error 79 on your HP Color LaserJet Pro M280-M281 printer, we ask that you try these steps below that may resolve the issue.
If after performing the procedures the error persists, please create a new topic.
In order for us to help you more quickly, we suggest that you add the words "error 79" in the title and after publishing, click on the flag.png so that we can support you.

Symptoms

“Error – 79” on HP Color LaserJet Pro M280-M281 Multifunction Printer series

Diagnosis

"Error 79"  displayed on printer after the a Update. Most likely the error will occur while the printer is connected to a network ( Ethernet / Wireless )

Solution

Below are the steps that one need to follow in the order as mentioned ...

  1.      Disconnect the printer from the NETWORK
  2.      If on wired network : Unplug the  Ethernet cable from back of the printer.
  3.      If on wireless network : Power of the Wireless router. Turn off the printer.
  4.      Wait for 30 seconds. Turn on the printer. 
  5.      If the printer is in READY state, on the printer front panel, go to Setup -> Network Setup -> Network Services -> IPv6 -> Off.
  6.      Turn off the printer. Wait for 30 seconds and then turn on the printer.
  7.      Once the printer is in Ready state you may go ahead and connect the printer to the network ( Power on the Wireless Router or plug in the Ethernet cable ) and then try printing.
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Contributors
Comments
‎04-16-2021 05:05 AM

Imaginethat4u,

Turn the printer off and what 30 seconds, then when you turn the printer back on, as it is begins, hold your finger down in the lower right corner of the screen for almost a minute. It will clear the memory by doing this and the screen will say “please wait” or “working”. Don’t release your finger until a new screen comes up. This fixed the problem for me. Hope it helps. 

‎04-19-2021 05:07 AM

I helps on that rebooting but functionality is lost. It is not enough to disable IPv6, I have to do the same for IPv4 as well. I have M281fdn version of the printer.

‎04-21-2021 11:15 AM

The steps outlined above did not resolve the 79 error. 

My printer reboots if I turn on the wifi or plug in the network cable. IPV4 is turned on, IPV6 is turned off. Can't check for an update because it requires network access. Any help is appreciated. 

‎04-21-2021 11:49 AM

Devuh, you are my hero. Clearing the memory fixed my issue. Thank you so much!

‎04-21-2021 07:47 PM

MABLACK,

yay!! That’s awesome!

Devuh

‎04-22-2021 07:42 AM

Same error. Clearing NVRam was the solution now. Note that I do NOT have the latest firmware, because that bricked my printer when using non-HP toner. I downgraded after an auto-update in November 2020. It was running fine since then until a few days ago. Tried IPv6, unplugging, all that... Firmware update was never an option for me. And in the end NVRam clearing solved me problem. I'm keeping IPv6 off since I don't need it anyway. Don't wanna risk corrupting something again. 

 

What annoys me is that I cannot figure out what's causing the error all of a sudden, out of nowhere... for multiple users since I notice the last posts are from this week. I don't have auto update on, nothing changed in my setup/wifi/home... How did this happen?

‎04-22-2021 08:38 AM

NajSeav, I agree. Nothing in our home changed and I don't auto-update to avoid these exact kind of issues. Why would this happen out of the clear blue? I'm a little uncomfortable thinking HP may have changed our printers without our permission. I'm out of warranty so it was super stressful. It took 3 hours of troubleshooting time out of my day. Not cool...

‎04-22-2021 12:19 PM

I had exactly the same. Not used the printer for at least a week and this morning around 5am it just start powering on and off in a loop for no apparent reason.

It had not auto updated the firmware. I had to pull the plug and try and solve it later. I indeed did solve it after doing the full reset. i did try a load of other things that didn't work.

Like you though i am baffled as to what has caused all our printers to have this problem all of a sudden.

I was thinking HP has done this to make us all to buy new printers and make more money. Maybe that's a bit too cynical, but there will be many people who are not tech savvy or try to look for a solution and just buy a new printer as they will think it has just packed up due to old age.

I have to admit this has been a brilliant multifunction printer and i hope no more problems like this arise again. 

  

 

‎04-22-2021 01:52 PM

Have followed this multiple times today - IPv6 is always off.  Upon completion of the process it may print a document or two then right back to constant rebooting....... Please help.  It's a 14 month old printer.....

‎04-22-2021 02:37 PM

In our environment, we found that this was happening on printers that had previously been registered with Google Cloud Print.

 

The problem was first noticed in the early morning on 2021-04-22.

 

The last host the printer communicated with before each 79 Service Error was accounts.google.com.

 

Google has ended support for Google Cloud Print, and our guess is that something changed within the last day or so on Google's side of things which then caused the affected printers to begin exhibiting these symptoms.

 

Preventing the printer from communicating with Google Cloud Print hosts stopped the 79 Service Error symptoms.

 

Removing Google Cloud Print appears to require that the printer interact with Google servers, which does not appear to work at the moment.

 

The factory reset suggested by others in these forums does seem to solve the issue.

 

If you perform a factory reset (or "Restore Defaults), you may need to adjust certain settings after the reset before the printer will work as it did before: IP addresses, hostnames, Bonjour names, Wi-Fi settings, etc.

 

After the factory reset, HP ePrint will be off, and if you need it you will need to re-enable it. After that, you will likely have a new HP ePrint email address, and you may no longer be able to use the previous ePrint email address for your printer.

 

For one printer, we unplugged it from the network, used the control panel to reset the printer to defaults (Setup -> Service -> Restore Defaults), then adjusted the settings that were important to us.

 

There may be a more elegant solution, but this worked for us.

‎04-22-2021 03:05 PM

Thanks for the input but we don't use the Google Cloud Print. This situation just happened one morning. The printer goes thru cycling constantly every couple of minutes. If you can catch it in the Ready state and do a print test page there is no print just faded colors down the page and the color cartages show almost full?

‎04-22-2021 03:07 PM

Tried this a couple of times without success.

‎04-22-2021 03:17 PM

This doesn't seem to be the only possible cause of the 79 Service Error, but in our case for the printers that started showing this symptom within the last day or so, this appeared to be the cause and restoring the printer to defaults was the solution.

 

For the affected printers in our environment, navigating on the LCD display to Network Setup -> Google Cloud Print showed the option "Remove Google Cloud Print".

 

The printer's embedded web interface also showed that the printer was registered with Google Cloud Print (under Networking -> Google Cloud Print -> Setup")

 

After restoring the printer to defaults, the Network Setup -> Google Cloud Print menu now shows "Print Claim Page", and the embedded web server no longer shows that the printer is registered with Google Cloud Print.

‎04-22-2021 03:44 PM

From other people commenting today and recently, this may have something to do with Google Cloud print changes. There may be other ways to fix this but a printer reset appears to work. The tip I picked up in the forum is to turn the printer off, then hold your finger on the bottom right of the M281fdw's screen while it powers up - this does an 'initialize permanent storage' routine. You'll have to turn IPv6 off at that point unless you need it (v4 and v6 are both 'on' at that point, and re do some things like the web-connected printing and Google Drive uploads. It also changed the IP address of the printer on my PC back to a previously defined version of the printer - it still works but I'll have to figureout how to get it back the the static IP address...   What a pain..........!

‎04-23-2021 04:28 PM

Nope none of these worked for me; suspect that the real problem is that I have non-HP cartridges. Will post here if that appears to be the case.

‎04-23-2021 05:11 PM

No, that did not stop me. And it shouldn't stop you unless you have updated the firmware in the printer recently. LD Products warned me about that a couple months ago. They also said how to downgrade the firmware if you had already upgraded. The latest firmware does prevent use of generic cartridges apparently. There's no freaking way I can afford over $500 for a set of cartridges for a stupid printer! Anyway, I wonder if you are really doing a reset. What I did was power off the printer. Then held my finger on the right bottom corner of the display while it powered up again. This did enough of a reset that eliminated the service error that we're talking about. There may be other more elegant ways to do the reset. I will never buy an HP printer again.

‎04-23-2021 10:00 PM

Thanks for help. Your solution did help but there was other things I did that ended up correcting the situation,

I disconnected LAN, phone and power cords then purged system by pressing power button.

Left all cords unplugged for couple of minutes then held the bower button for a couple seconds while attaching power cord.

After initializing and in Ready state reset to factory defaults before printer changes its mind.

Came up clean no errors after the reset. Test Printing etc. went as it should and 79 service error has not come back.

‎05-12-2021 04:24 PM

Worked for me.  Thank you.  There is clearly a problem you'd think HP would try to fix it.

‎07-13-2021 09:46 AM

@Jabji , I am getting 79 service error problem in my HP laser pro map 281 printer after it asked me there is firmware updates available and and said ok.  Almost 1 year back it happened and still it is the same. The printer goes into ready state only some seconds and immediately 79 service error displays and the printer goes back to restarting . I t is not even letting me do anything in between. It is just stuck in the loop of restarting. The firmware data code shows 20201021. Please help me. Thank you.

‎09-30-2022 04:03 PM

Genius. This worked. The bot took me through similar steps but different order. Thank you so much!

‎10-22-2022 09:55 PM

The workaround for me was to unplug the Ethernet cable and connect the printer to the network over WiFi. 

I had tried everything recommended here, but the printer would endlessly stop and restart. I was about ready to junk the printer, which has been great mechanically. 

‎10-27-2022 11:07 AM

I simply cannot believe that after a whole day of trying and failing with all the provided HP solutions to this problem, that this simple fix (disabling IPV-6) WORKED.  THANK YOU.    HP would have had me buying new DIMMs.  You'd think that they would provide this solution online....but.....NOOOOOO.....

‎11-12-2022 08:26 PM

This solution gave me false hope.  After disabling IPV6 as per the instructions provided here, ....everything worked and I printed my jobs.  However after finishing and turning the printer off, the next day when I turned it on the error had returned, and yes.....IPV6 is disabled on both the printer and my Windows PC.  This is extremely frustrating and it seems that HP has no answers.  I've done firmware, and every other suggested fix.  Come on, HP, you're losing customers here.

‎12-26-2022 05:51 PM

Tried this multiple times -- no help.  I can't reach a real person to talk to.  I use an Apple computer, but answers all seem to expect us to be on a Windows platform.

Frustrating!  Have not had this printer for too long & it just stopped!

Tired of spending days on this!!

 

‎02-26-2023 07:29 AM

Apparently this works for me too.

It appare absurd that the only way to solve is to disable basic network functions.

 

Note: on syslog server the error is reported as

 

2023-02-26T13:28:48.000979+01:00 10.*.*.* printer: peripheral fatal error:79

 

‎03-18-2023 04:36 PM

HP did add this to the support site. Though this is a little clearer.
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_1688155-1419235-16

 

‎04-16-2023 11:53 AM

This did not work for me... How do I get to the DIMM Module on this, HP had recommended that the DIMM might be bad.

‎04-16-2023 12:08 PM

Hi All,

I was experiencing virtually ALL of these issues with the printer and all the "solutions" either didn't work, or only worked temporarily.  I finally permanently fixed it, but this worked for me only, can't vouch for others.   After endless research I discovered that my music software was glitching , the reason being that an updated NIC card driver had broken something.  So I tried disconnecting my printer from the ethernet cable and re-installing it using a USB cable and all my issues went away.  It's been months now.  I did roll back the NIC card driver to an old one and that fixed my music glitch, but I haven't since tried to connect the printer to check it out as I don't really need to because I can still print across my network even though it's connected by USB.  Bottom line is my printer problem was network related.  Hope this helps at least one person.

‎04-29-2023 01:25 PM

Thank you!  Resolved and printing again.  Called HP and like others experienced, since the warranty expired they would only help me if I paid $19.95.  Super frustrating!  Thank you again for posting this solution.

‎05-12-2023 07:56 AM

Will this solution also work on a LaserJet M234dwe?  I am getting a Error 79.

‎05-12-2023 08:10 AM

Will this solution work on a LaserJet M234dwe with an Error 79?  I am using an Apple laptop.  Printer has been work great for a couple of years.

‎12-01-2023 10:03 PM

I have experienced the sames issues after updating the firware and completed the same  processes suggested in many of the forums without success.  For me the problem was solved by

  1. Remove all cables from the printer.
  2. On start up/power on, press and hold (touch) the bottom right of screen.  Continue holding for about a minute until message "permanent storage init" is displayed. (the printer then resets all NVRAM)
  3. On you PC go to "Services"  ( run services.msc).  Look for Print Spooler and STOP/(re-)START this service (use right mouse click)
  4. On the printer menu go to Setup Menu>Network Setup>Restore Defaults.

Restart printer.  Plug cable in (or turn WiFi ON and configure).  My printer then identified and alloacted IP Address (DHCP) and allocated IPv6 address.   Steps 3 and 4 were the ones that fixed my issues.  I am now able to print and scan over the network.  ( I reinstalled the HP Scan and capture App to achieve remote scanning as the app wouldn't start)

‎01-09-2024 06:00 PM

Thanks Jabzi, 

My printer was perfectly fine until I changed my network service provider & all Hell broke loose with the cyclical Error 79. Nothing helped. I had some advice to turn off the printer for 30 seconds but that didn't work. Disconnect the network & that didn't work. You provided all the missing steps in-between, which I followed exactly.  Now my printer is working perfectly again. I was literally at the point of believing that the printer had died at the fault of the new Network. I tried this last effort you gave above and it worked. Everything is back to normal. Thanks again. 

‎04-13-2024 08:16 PM

I did all of the above and it still errored.  I went back and set it back to IPv6 and it is working.

‎04-15-2024 03:15 PM

I tried this it seemed to work. But as soon as i turned the router back on, the printer went into error 79 again.

i really dont know what to do, any suggestions?

thank you

‎04-15-2024 10:07 PM

@Alex_iLDuce

 

 

  1. Power off printer
  2. Remove all network cables from the printer.
  3. On start up/power on, press and hold (touch) the bottom right of screen.  Continue holding for about a minute until message "permanent storage init" is displayed. (the printer then resets all NVRAM).  Keep your finger depressed on the screen until a new screen is displayed.
  4. On your PC, (in a networked environment, the PC that last tried to print) go to "Services"  ( run services.msc).  Look for Print Spooler and STOP/(re-)START this service (use right mouse click)
  5. On the printer menu go to Setup Menu>Network Setup>Restore Defaults.
    • This will set printer to DHCP and enable IP6
  6. Connect printer network cable back up to router
  7. Print test page and network settings report (for your information)

After resetting the printer as per the above, my printer all too often returns to the error 79 state.   After abusing it for its complete lack of understanding, service and performance,  I redo the above steps 1-4 and 6 to reset.   The fix appears to not be a one off event, as the printer for whatever reasons, errors in the same way.  By the time you've done it three or four times, you will have memorized the steps.

 

 

‎07-08-2024 01:20 PM

100% absolutely did NOT solve the problem.  That, on top of this being caused by one of HP's recommended updates has me shopping for a different brand of printer.  Trash.

‎08-11-2024 11:45 AM

Why?  Why is this still a problem?  Why did I buy a printer that I was able to print off of 6 times before having this issues? Why are these issues not fixed? Why do I waste hours of my life getting it running, only to have it go back to the original settings the next time I use it? Why, with all these problems, should I ever be interested in purchasing an HP product again? Love to hear any good reason...

‎08-11-2024 01:45 PM

This is why I have the letters   PITA   next to my notes for my HP Color Lase3r Jet Pro MFP M281fdw. It's been a struggle for 3+ years. I can't afford to just dump it, and I'm not sure what I would change to. I have been using generic cartridges, but those are problematic themselves, and they regularly have to replace them for me. Sorry for all the problems....welcome to the club. 

‎08-11-2024 02:07 PM

I fixed this problem with mine, but can't guarantee anyone else.

With me, after tearing my hair out and endless troubleshooting, the problem ended up being bad NIC card drivers that had been auto updated from Windows update.  After rolling them back to an earlier version, I was able to stay connected to the network.  THAT said, since then I've decided to go potentially trouble free and I just connected via USB, set the printer up that way and all my home network computers can still see it and print over the network just fine.  As I said, your mileage may vary.  But it's no wonder HP has never been able to pin this down, the problem can be many other things.  But do look at your NIC card drivers.  Go back to an earlier version, uninstall and re-install the printer.  Then try again.  Or....just use USB.

‎01-22-2025 01:29 PM

Sadly, this did not fix my error.  It is weird in that it just popped up.  Yesterday, we were printing fine and now this error.  I’ve updated the firmware, I’ve tried these steps, I’ve tried cycling power.  Not sure what else to try.  HP support is horrendous.

 

‎03-29-2025 07:35 PM

Can it be possible to get the 79 service error due to the printer not having a statis IP address? I've tried all of the fixes recommended but stumbled on an article, used AI Microsoft Copilot, and was wondering when I run the HP Print and scan doctor, why does it always fix a port mismatch issue? My printer's IP address was set at DHCP instead of static. So I'm thinking that this could be the issue with the 79 Service error

‎03-29-2025 11:19 PM

@OldSoldier_1 ,

You may try setting the STATIC IP. That's one of the possible solution.

Let me know if it worked for you.

‎03-31-2025 10:48 AM

Jabzi, I did that, then this morning I turned on my laptop and the printer went into 79 service error. This happens to be a daily occurrence. I cycle the wireless modem, it also is the router, I turn off the printer, sometimes I unplug the power cord and plug it back in, I've also upgraded the firmware. These issues I didn't have until I was forced to upgrade by my internet service provider and now I'm using wifi 6. I've also turned off ipv6. 

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