Common Problems with Networked Multifunction Printers

Before I upgraded to a network printer, I used to use a manual USB switch to flip my old printer back and forth between devices. With the fixed location desktops it wasn’t such a big deal, but when it came to our laptops, it was a real pain; you had to be physically next to the printer to plug into one of the USB ports, and that kinda took all the fun and portability out of the laptop.

With networked printers you can print from anywhere. Using the laptop in another room? No problem, just connect to the Wi-Fi and bam, your printer is mounted on your device. You can even print from other networked devices like smartphones and tablets the same way, something that wasn’t possible in the old USB printer days. Wicked awesome.

So, what’s the down side, you ask? Well, I’ve found a couple of problems that you probably won’t find listed in the installation manual.

The first and most common problem is the “disappearing printer”. This is usually caused by the printer’s IP address changing. If you set the printer up using the DHCP network option, it will pull a random IP address from your router. Most routers will save an IP for use by a device for a short period of time, but if you were to leave the printer off for a few days, this temporary lease expires. Meanwhile, if you have lots of networked devices in your house like we do, i.e. smartphones, tablets, smart TV’s, iPods, something else is liable to grab the IP that the printer had used during setup. Next time you turn on the printer, it grabs a different address, and your devices can’t find it. This can also happen if you swap out your router or switch due to malfunction or ISP change.

There are a few fixes for this one. You can uninstall the printer on your device and then reinstall it, Windows will find it and make note of the new IP. The problem with this fix is that the printer is liable to “disappear” again the next time you leave it off for a while.

The best solution is to either assign the printer a Static (permanent) IP address, or leave it in DHCP mode and create an IP lease or reservation on your router port. If you decide to use a Static address, you need to use an address from the top of your router’s IP address range, a number that your router would never reach when it’s handing them out.

The next problem is with scanning and it’s a problem that’s unique to PC’s with multiple accounts. When you install a device on a Windows 8 PC you need to either be logged in as the administrator, or if you’re using a user or guest account, you need to enter administrator credentials. Once it’s installed, all accounts are able to print with no problem, but scanning is a different story. If you’re not using an account with administrator privileges and you try to use the scanning function, you’ll get a communications error like this:

Don’t panic, the fix for this one is simple. Instead of double clicking on the scanner icon, right click on it and select “Run as administrator” from the drop down. The system will prompt you to enter your admin credentials, and then you’re off and scanning.

Ok, last problem, this one is with faxing. Faxing is old school, I know, but sometimes you just gotta do it. A lot of banks and state and federal agencies insist that you fax documents to them, it’s got to do with them not recognizing the validity of digital signatures. I’ve faxed successfully numerous times, so I know the function works, but recently I needed to fax some documents and I wasn’t having any luck. I’d hear the other end pick up and start its crazy screeching, but after a minute or so my printer would hang up the line and show a “could not connect” message on the little LCD screen. Frustrating.

The most common problems with faxing are a either a staticky line, or a fax machine mismatch. The fix for a staticky line is to turn ECM (error correction mode) on if it’s not already enabled.

The fax machine mismatch problem is remedied by turning off the V.34 option in the fax setup. This setting has to do with the line modulation technique that the machines use during the fax modem handshake, or screech. When they’re wailing their love cries at each other, they’re really negotiating a connection speed. V.34 allows for a transmission rate of up to 28,800 bit/s, heady stuff in the fax world, and if the fax machine on the other end is an old standalone fax and not a new multifunction device, it’s just gonna say “huh?”, and drop you like a hot potato. Don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re done, though. Although 28,800 bit/s doesn’t seem very fast in these days of Gigabit Ethernet, it’s infinitely faster than the faxing alternatives, which can be as low as 2400 bit/s, and that’s slower than a herd of turtles.

Ok, that’s it. I’ve skimmed through these fixes because the specifics depend on your brand of router and printer. If you need more detailed info you can go to the device’s website, but at least now you have a starting point. Happy printing!

That is all.

Oh What A Feeling… Toyota

This ubiquitous Toyota jingle has taken on new meaning for me of late, as two of our vehicles are part of the recent gas pedal recall. Where once it most accurately described the enjoyment and peace of mind I’ve experienced with my Toyota products, now it best describes my uneasiness and worry.

The two vehicles affected are a 2007 Camry and a 2009 Highlander. The Camry has the double whammy, it’s got the “too low pedal issue”, where your floor mat can get wedged up against the pedal (and it has). It’s also got the Drive by Wire throttle issue. The 2009 Highlander just got added to the recall this week. While it has plenty of clearance between the gas pedal and the mats, it has the same electronic throttle assembly as the Camry.

Drive by Wire, or DbW, is an alternative to the old cable controlled gas pedal. Vehicles with DbW no longer have a cable linking the gas pedal to the throttle, instead they employ a myriad of electronic sensors and processors to control throttle movement. The reason car manufacturers have been switching to DbW are twofold. First, it allows easy integration of systems like ESC (Electronic Stability Control) and adaptive cruise control. Secondly, it enables manufacturers to give you more form and function in a smaller cabin space, as they’re no longer subject to the physical constraints of pedal range of motion inherent in the traditional cable controlled pedals. It’s a great innovation, unless something goes kerfluey in its electronics, which seems to be the case here.

Since shortly after we bought the Camry, we’ve been bringing it back to the dealership because it idles too high at times. When you put this baby in drive, you better have your foot on the brake, ‘cause it’s prone to lurch into motion. “Nothing wrong here” said the dealership. “It’s the Sports Edition; it’s supposed to be that way.” To that I say BS; I was born at night, but not last night. They just didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, or worse, they didn’t want to open that particular can of worms until they had no recourse.

This same vehicle has had the Toyota winter mats jam the pedal, also. Scared the bejeesus out of my wife as she zoomed right past her exit, thank God she was on the highway when it happened. Toyota “fixed” that problem with a recall on their winter mats. The old set had a rather high raised lip around the edges, like on the plastic boot trays you can get for inside your front door. The size of the lip and the overall footprint of the replacement mats have been greatly reduced. Their other fix for this problem is to lop off the bottom of the gas pedal.

So, what’s a consumer to do? In the short term, we’ve gone over the correct procedure for dealing with the problem until it’s been remedied. Toyota outlines emergency measures you can take in a worst case scenario on their website. Depress both feet firmly on the brake, no pumping, as that will deplete their vacuum, and shift the car into neutral, then turn off the ignition as soon as possible. Do not turn the key past accessory if you’re still moving though, as this will lock the steering column.

Our final decision on the fate of these vehicles will depend on how Toyota reacts in the coming days. We put a lot of thought and research into these purchases, and on the whole, we love both vehicles. I often joke that both of them do everything but sex me up, much to my wife’s chagrin, so ideally I would like to get them fixed properly and move on. Toyota announced yesterday that they have the fix, and will announce more about it this coming week. If they do, and they supply the dealerships with the new parts before they supply their factory floors, I’ll be reasonably happy, albeit greatly inconvenienced.

On the other hand, if they care more about getting their production lines moving again then they do about their customer’s safety, I’ll be more than angry, and probably done with them forever.

I’m sure that their delay in announcing the “fix” is so that they can line up additional suppliers of the parts in question, and also to document the fix very well. Once the cause is definitively known, the lawsuits are going to fly, and the original part manufacturer will most likely be crushed by the weight of them and never be able to supply the corrected product. Given Toyota’s Kaizen philosophy, it’s probably what they’re up to this very weekend, and also the best way to prevent further repair delays.

I'll keep you posted on our progress, so stay tuned.


Update:

We finally got our Toyota recall issues resolved, and that takes a load off my mind. I got lucky on my truck. Its VIN starts with a J, indicating that it was made in Japan, and is thus exempt from the recall. The Camry got 3 fixes; a makeover of the gas pedal and the floor, a reprogram of the computer that causes a brake pedal actuation to override acceleration, and the replacement of a faulty oil line. As my wife had experienced the “Runaway Camry” situation first hand, it’s been a real worry. Hopefully it’s once again the sharp and dependable vehicle we thought we were buying. Only time will tell.

What Are You Doing?

I’ve been playing around with Twitter lately, and for me, the jury is still out as to its usefulness.

I really love the whole concept of it. In theory, it’s a great way to stay informed, meet people, and to receive and pump out updates on anything you may be interested in.

In reality, once you start following a few people, there’s so many updates flowing that it becomes hard to follow anyone without a third party app like Tweetdeck. Unless you’re famous, you have to follow to be followed, and I’ve been playing nice, but you reach a point where you’re so inundated by updates from Internet marketers and motivational speakers that it becomes untenable.

I still haven’t decided yet if the whole experiment is worth loading another processor munching, profile saving app on any of my machines, so for now I’ve taken a few baby steps towards streamlining the experience of trying to use Twitter in its plain vanilla form.

First things first: I’ve now seen enough updates from everyone I follow to start weeding them out. If all you do is post about business opportunities, or how I can gain a gazillion followers overnight, you’re gone. If your profile starts with “My mission is to empower and educate you”, gone.

You get the picture. I’ll probably lose a few followers myself, but it will be worth it. Now, what to do with the rest?

This was actually pretty simple. I added a “Twitter Feeds” folder to Google Reader and populated it with the RSS feeds from the Twitter profile page of the people I’m most interested in. I already have the Reader gadget on my iGoogle page, so the ten most recent posts from this small subset of people are always right there. Not as functional or elegant a solution as adding Tweetdeck or Twhirl, but it gets the job done.

If I decide to stick with it, I’ll bite the bullet and download something, but not until I’ve done a little more research. Twitter itself seems a bit unstable, running slow and sometimes disappearing completely. I know these problems are caused by the incredible load on the service at times, but there are other painful little glitches that can’t be blamed on traffic. Sometimes I don’t see updates from people that I follow, unless I drop them and re add them, and sometimes the tabs and the search box work, and sometimes they don’t.

The biggest problem I have with Twitter though, is the question above the update box.

Every time I see that “What are you doing?” caption, I hear the voices of Brad and Chad in my head, and I don’t know if I can deal with that in a long term relationship…

You be the judge:

Windows Autorun/Autoplay Problems

I recently did some major scrubbing and upgrading of my system, and as is often the case, broke something in the process.

My PC had gotten sluggish; it needed a good cleaning and more memory. Norton had flagged a couple of downloaders and a Trojan Webkit that it couldn’t remove, or quarantine, so I decided just to nuke it and start over.

Confident that I had a good backup, I popped the hood and added another 2 gig of RAM, then reloaded Windows. Next I spent about 2 hours researching and removing all of the useless crap that comes bundled on the reload disks. Once I was happy with it, I plugged in the network cable and began downloading and applying all of the security patches and updates that had come out for service pack 2, culminating in the application of service pack 3. Done, or so I thought…

The computer was running great. It was clean as a whistle and fast as lightning, and I was a happy man. That is, until the first time I popped a CD into one of the drives.., and nothing happened.

Normally the Autoplay wizard fires up when you insert or connect any media or media devices into your PC. It’s the little wizard that pops up and asks you what you’d like to do with said media. Insert a CD, DVD, USB drive or connect a camera or MP3 player, and it asks you to choose a program to open, play or import data with. It’s not a necessity to have, but it sure makes life easy.

If I opened up My Computer, I could see the media mounted in the drive, so I could use it, but something was blocking Autoplay from starting. I checked all of my settings, and found the process was enabled on all of the drives, so I began searching the Interwebs for an answer.

First I found this document on the Microsoft Help and Support site. It described the problem to a T, and came to the conclusion that the problem was caused by having certain versions of Easy CD Creator loaded on the machine. The fix was to remove the software, and then make some registry changes to re-enable Autoplay. Not having this program, I continued to search for an answer more appropriate for my situation.

Then I found this link to an Autoplay Repair Wizard available from the Microsoft Download Center. After verifying the authenticity of my copy of Windows, Microsoft allowed me to download and run the wizard, which indeed found a problem, fixed it, and wrote the changes and results to a log file. The wizard requires you to log out and then log back in to complete the fix, and once I did, the system immediately recognized the CD I had in one of the drives and fired up the Autoplay feature. Sweet.

Just to be certain I had the problem licked, I switched the CD to the secondary drive. I’m glad I did, because I found that I wasn’t done. I ended up having to run the wizard on all of my drives and ports, one at a time, with a logout in between each. For the USB drives, I had to insert a thumb drive to get them to show up in the wizard’s device repair list, but once I fixed the first one, they all began to work again. It was a bit tedious, but it looks like my system is finally back to normal.

This must be a fairly common problem, as Microsoft has come up with a repair wizard for it. The last puzzler I had like this was the Media Center black screen problem, which they also had a wizard to fix. My post on that problem, and repair, has been the top visited post via keyword search on my blog for over 6 months now, so I hope this one proves to be just as helpful.

Issues With Videos In PowerPoint During Projection

Okay, so you've got someone coming in to do a presentation, class or pep talk. They're bringing their material on their own laptop or media device of choice, and you want to have everything ready to rock.

You've got your room set up with an LCD projector, screen, PC and laptop video connection. Every thing's plumbed through a nice neat patch panel with USB inputs and connected to the in-room sound system. You're so golden, your tail's waggin'!

and then the guest arrives...

They plug in their laptop and things go well, until they get to a slide that calls out a video clip. On the screen, all you see is a black box where the video should be. Yikes, talk about a buzz kill.

On some machines, videos will play correctly in PowerPoint when using a single monitor, but will only show up as a black box when the system is driving both it's own monitor and an external one. The quick fix for this is to FN/F4 toggle your local screen off, then restart the video. A less crippling to the presenter, but slightly more time consuming fix, is to turn off video hardware acceleration.

Of course, the real solution is to update your video drivers or upgrade your ride, but these aren't going to help you in the here and now. Warning: DO NOT be the guy who starts updating stuff 2 minutes before, or worse, during, a presentation.

Here's a link to a great site for more in depth info on both the quick, and the correct, fixes: PPTools