Setting up the HP LaserJet Pro P1102w

My HP LaserJet Professional P1102w was a pain to set up and every couple of months stops working and requires sleuthing to fix. I cannot recommend this printer, but here’s what I know about it.

First time setup

1. Set up the printer via USB (Linux)

This is one of only two parts of setup that just worked, and the only thing that has reliably kept working over time. If my family didn’t need wireless printing I would simply use it as an old fashioned USB-only printer and I would be a happy man.

Connect the printer to a computer via USB. Turn the printer on. Install the hplip package via your distribution’s package manager.

As root, hp-setup. This is done as root in order to have the printer available for all users of the computer you are seated at. You must already be root; running sudo hp-setup as a normal user will fail.

In Device Discovery, choose USB. In Select From Discovered Devices, choose the correct detected printer. TODO: Finish this.

2. Set up wireless services on the printer

HP’s instructions say to use the HP Device Manager (GUI) or hp-setup (CLI), but neither work reliably for me. Instead, open your router’s configuration and enable Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). Yes, I know WPS is insecure. We’ll disable it in a moment. Still in the router’s configuration, initiate a WPS session. On the top of the printer, press the wireless button. The blue light just below the wireless button will begin to blink. After a moment, the router’s configuration page will confirm success and you are in.

I recommend that at this point you check your work so far. First, print a self test and configuration page. To do this, press and hold the cancel (red X) button on the top of the printer until the ready light starts to blink, then release the button. If nothing happens after 10 seconds, release the button then immediately try again. Two pages will print; we are interested in the first one. Under the Network Information section confirm the following:

• IPv4 Address: The address the router has assigned your printer, which will probably be of the form 192.168.x.xxx
• IP configured By: DHCP
• 802.1b/g/n Wireless Status: Enabled
• 802.1b/g/n Wireless Network Name (SSID): The SSID of your router

Still checking your work, open a web browser and enter the IP address shown on the configuration page you just printed. The printer’s web administration page should appear.

Once you have checked your work, go back to your router’s configuration and disable WPS.

3. Give the printer a static IP address

This is optional but it makes this printer less unreliable for me. This is done in your router’s configuration, and every router is different. In general terms, open the list of connected devices and find the one using the IP address you were given in step 2. That’s the printer. Give it a static IP address (the one it now has should be fine) and save your work.

You are done with this step. Learn from my mistake and do not additionally set a static IP address in the printer’s web administration. Not only is this unnecessary, it will lock you out if your router is reset or replaced and wants to give the printer a different IP address.

4. Set up the printer on a Wi-Fi-enabled Linux computer

HP’s instructions say to use hp-setup, but again that does not work reliably for me. Instead, use your distribution’s configuration tool to discover and set up the printer. Configuration tools vary, but OpenSUSE’s YaST is intuitive and quick. You can also set it up using CUPS at http://localhost:631/printers/.

Although not necessary, I reboot the computer and attempt to print something to confirm that all remains well after a reboot.

5. Set up the printer on a Wi-Fi-enabled Mac

macOS from 10.12 onward detects the wireless printer automatically. No special setup was required.

6. Set up wireless printing from mobile

I’ve given up hope of ever printing from mobile to this printer. Life is short.

The HP Smart app (Android, iOS) purports to solve this problem. Given my experience with HP software I’ll pass, but if it works for you do leave a comment below.

7. Further configuration as desired

Return to the printer’s web administration page that we opened in step 2A. Change settings as desired. Nondefault settings l like are:

• Settings
  • Print Settings
    • Auto-off after: Never
• Networking
  • IPv4 Configuration
    • Host name: LaserJet. By changing the name it becomes easier to find and administer in the router.

Check your work. On Linux you would do that with:

lpstat -p -d

The output will list all available printers and indicate which, if any, is the system default. If the system default is not what you want, change it. On Linux that would be:

lpoptions -d name_of_printer

…replacing “name_of_printer” with the exact name that lpstat gave you a moment ago. Then check your work with lpstat again.

Periodic maintenance

I have found that it is best to clean the pickup roller every time I replace the toner cartridge. That seems to ward off paper feed problems.

To clean the pickup roller, first remove the toner cartridge, then remove the roller as shown in this video. Dab a clean lint free cloth in alcohol and scrub away. Let dry, then replace per the video.

Isopropyl alcohol of 90% or more is said to be best, not only for this specific task but for cleaning electronic equipment generally. Locally I can only find ethyl alcohol in unlabeled strength (which presumably means it is watered down), but that works fine for this task.

Fixing it after upgrading the OS

Every time I upgrade any Linux distribution, say from OpenSUSE 15.2 to 15.3, that kills printing to this (but no other) printer. That despite the fact that all printing-related packages remain installed, CUPS is running, and all user directories are untouched. Thanks, HP. What most often brings it back to life is this:

Take note of the version number of HPLIP you have installed. If you’re on an RPM-based distro, you can see that with rpm -q hplip. From openprinting.org’s archive of plug-ins for HP printers, download the one that matches your version of HPLIP, along with the corresponding .asc file.

Run hp-plugin. It will ask if you want to download the plug-in from HP or use a local copy. The former would be great except that it never works (thanks, HP) so choose the latter. After working a bit it will warn you that it is unable to validate the plug-in. That is a security risk but that’s what you and I get for having bought a printer that requires binary blobs. Hold your nose and choose to install the plug-in anyway. With that, the plug-in installs and the printer will work again. For a while anyway.

Troubleshooting

Confirm the printer is on. You wold be amused to know how often I forget to check that first. I grumble about the printer’s unreliability but this particular problem is on me.

Next, determine if the problem is with the printer itself, communication between it and the computer you are seated at, or on the computer you are trying to print from. One way to help determine this is to try to print from a different device that had previously been set up to use it.

Another method is to open a web browser on the affected computer and attempt to view the printer’s web administration. It will have an address of the form http://192.168.xxx.xxxx/, matching the IP address you were given in step 2. If that won’t load, then the computer cannot contact the printer. If it does load, go to Information – Print Info Pages and attempt to print one of the info pages. If it prints, that suggests the problem is with the driver or software on the computer you are seated at.

When that happens, open http://localhost:631/printers/ in a web browser and select the printer. Press the “Maintenance” dropdown and select “Resume Printer”. If you are prompted for credentials, enter those of root. This usually brings wireless printing back to life for a couple of months.

The HP Device Manager is supposed to let you resume the printer, but let me warn you away from that buggy tool. If you insist, open it, select your printer, and open the Printer Control tab. I usually find that the printer has been inexplicably paused. Press “Resume printer”. What usually happens is that I get a never ending spinning cursor, an unresponsive Device Manager, and steadily increasing RAM usage. I then have to find and kill the Device Manager’s PIDs before the computer runs out of RAM and starts using swap. Thanks, HP.

If your users are like mine, they first try to print the same file ten or twelve times before letting you know that there is a problem, and they don’t tell you about the two reams of print jobs they put in the queue. So check the print queue before bringing the printer back to life.

One fine day the above didn’t work. Wireless printing no longer worked from any device, nor was the web administration page reachable, but USB printing worked fine. I printed a self test and configuration page (see step 2A above). Surprise! The configuration page revealed that the printer’s network configuration had somehow been changed to intriguing values:

• IP configured by: Manual (so it would ignore IP assignations via DHCP)
• IPv4 address: 0.0.0.0 (which is null)

Well of course that isn’t going to work. With those settings, not only would wireless printing fail, neither would the internal web server be available to let me reconfigure it, nor could I have the router reassign it a new IP address via DHCP. What should have worked was the utility hp-wificonfig, but it silently failed. Thanks, HP. So I reset the printer to factory default values, then used WPS to regain wireless access to it per step 2A above.

To reset the printer to factory values, turn the printer off. Hold down both the wireless button and the cancel (X) button while turning the printer back on. Do not release the two buttons until the printer stops making noise.

Print a configuration page to confirm that the printer has been reset, then proceed per step 2A above.

References

• HP Support for P1102 series
• How to print a self test and configuration page
• HP Linux Imaging and Printing
• OpenSUSE wiki: How to set-up a HP printer, which I wish I had found earlier