Multiple HP 8610 MFPs in small office

[Theo]

I have an office environment with 5 windows 10 machines on three rooms, they have 3 HP OfficeJet 8610 machines, one in each room. Their computers are all configured to print to all of the OfficeJets over the network, and scan to the closest one.
Randomly though, a computer will lose connection to a printer, sometimes rebooting fixes it and sometimes it has to be removed and reinstalled. When this happens, I can still ping the printer's ip from the computer that is not seeing it, and also access the printer's admin page, but the printer is grayed out in printers.
The printers IP addresses are not changing, and windows is printing to the WSD port configured on the printer installation.
Any Ideas?

 

[altrenda]

Printers connected by Wifi or hard wired?

You say the IP addresses aren't changing, but is it a Static IP or DHCP.

Have you tried connecting them locally by IP address instead of network using WSD?

We manage bunches of those, and while they are decent, they are of the same sketchy quality of recent HP smb/consumer gear. They usually are good for about 2 years.

 

[Metanis]

Let us know what you figure out, I'd be curious to know the fix. I keep setting up printers the old-fashioned way with a static IP and a DHCP reservation in the router and then a TCP/IP port driver on the client.

 

[PCskies]

I would make sure all 3 printers have the latest firmware. HP came out with an updated firmware for the 8610 in 3/2016.

 

[Markverhyden]

Printers connected by Wifi or head wired?

You say the IP addresses aren't changing, but is it a Static IP or DHCP.

Have you tried connecting them locally by IP address instead of network using WSD?

We manage bunches of those, and while they are decent, they are of the same sketchy quality of recent HP smb/consumer gear. They usually are good for about 2 years.

Yeah, their automagical software leaves a lot to be desired. I try to do everything manually via fixed IP's on the devices. Couple of weeks ago a customer called and left a message about the same symptom. By the time I called back he had "fixed" the problem, plugged it in via USB, then unplugged it and it worked. LOL!!!!

 

[freedomit]

We come across this problem regularly. Even though we set DHCP reservations for the printers and print to the IP address port they change to WSD and then after a while stop printing. A reboot often fixes the issue but WSD ports are really flakey and often cause issues.

 

[marley1]

What I do is install printer by ip on server only the print driver and setup scan to folder

 

[altrenda]

Let us know what you figure out, I'd be curious to know the fix. I keep setting up printers the old-fashioned way with a static IP and a DHCP reservation in the router and then a TCP/IP port driver on the client.

I also am old school. I set up DHCP to exclude the lower 10 and upper 15 IP's for printers, NAS, ftp, whatever and give everything a static IP outside the DHCP range. I see no reason to change.

 

[kwest]

Tell them to stop being cheap and buy a nice copier that will do everything they need.

Don't depend on a 4 year old inkjet printer for business needs.

8610 has issues with multiple on the same network. I haven't found a fix for random stops. My current home printer is a clients old one that would keep dropping on the network. As of the latest firmware it was working great.

 

[Theo]

Printers connected by Wifi or hard wired?

You say the IP addresses aren't changing, but is it a Static IP or DHCP.

Have you tried connecting them locally by IP address instead of network using WSD?

We manage bunches of those, and while they are decent, they are of the same sketchy quality of recent HP smb/consumer gear. They usually are good for about 2 years.

They're on a dhcp reservation. I haven't tried connecting just by IP address yet but I will try that next.

 

[Theo]

Tell them to stop being cheap and buy a nice copier that will do everything they need.

Don't depend on a 4 year old inkjet printer for business needs.

8610 has issues with multiple on the same network. I haven't found a fix for random stops. My current home printer is a clients old one that would keep dropping on the network. As of the latest firmware it was working great.

I think the main reason why they like them is they have one in each room, so they don't have to walk all the way to the copier. It's really not a long ways to the copier, but you know office folk...

 

[kwest]

I think the main reason why they like them is they have one in each room, so they don't have to walk all the way to the copier. It's really not a long ways to the copier, but you know office folk...

Get them brother laser printers then for printing and a copier for scanning.

 

[Theo]

Get them brother laser printers then for printing and a copier for scanning.

I tend to prefer brothers over HPs too, I'll suggest that setup but they do like the current setup of an MFP in each room.
I'll definitely try to update firmware on them first though, see if that does anything.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The issue is the native Windows WSD service....which does this with network printers now, if you auto detect when tripping through the add printer weeeezard. Add a printer, uncheck auto detect...but specify IP printer..manually type in the IP of the printer being added. It should stick this way. If you've already added the printer via auto detect...and you change it from WSD to IP..it will usually revert back to WSD down the road. Doing printers on fixed IPs via DHCP reservation is the right approach...I'm simliar to Altrenda...I do printers down in the low range, usually in the .20 on up range. I have the dynamic DHCP pool usually starting at .100 on up for workstations 'n other client stuffors.

 

[Theo]

I'm trying IP address, but it seems like the scan functionality from the scanner is no longer working which I was afraid of. This office scans to PDF exclusively and windows fax and scan doesn't support PDFs. I'm going to try the windows 10 app when the user can find their Microsoft account password.

 

[Theo]

So to follow up with this office setup the hp scan windows 10 app seems to be working and scanning to pdf.
Great success, thanks to everyone that chimed in.