Brother Printer won't wake up on print command

Question

Brother Printer won't wake up on print command

I have a Brother HL-2070N laser printer connected to my network via Ethernet. My wife is the primary user of the printer from her G4 iBook. When we first got the printer she was on 10.3.X and the printer would not wake up when she fired off a print job. She would have to power off the printer, power it back on and reissue the print job. As long as she kept the printer faitrly active everything was fine but after a long break, the printer would not wake up. I did not experience the same issue with my G5 iMac running 10.4.X I was told that the problem was due to a network issue in Panther and I resolved the problem by setting the printer with a static IP address.

I have now upgraded her (and me) to 10.5 Leopard and reinstalled the printer through Bonjour (without specifying a static IP address). The printer was fine for about a week but now the old problem has returned and the printer won't wake up when a print job is started.

I suppose if I reinstall the printer on her iBook with a static IP address the problem may be solved again but I'm curious as to why it is happening and why after a week or more of no problems? Has anyone else seen this isue and are there any suggestions on how to resolve it short of setting a static IP address for the printer?

Thanks,

David

G5 iMac Rev. B., Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 7, 2007 1:12 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2007 6:09 PM in response to David Schwartzer

I installed the printer on the iBook as an IP printer with the static address and that resolved the problem.

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Answer 2

Nov 17, 2007 11:12 PM in response to David Schwartzer

I'll have to try this fix David!

I have a Brother 5170DN and a 2070N and they both seem to drop their ability handle print jobs, yet not their IP addresses. In my case, I have both setup with a Static DHCP address given out by my router, which gives me the ability to always know where I can check to see if they are online; however, even if I can use the web-admin site onboard the printers I still am unable to get them to spool a print job. Since your fix is basically making the IPs legitimately static and not DHCP forced static --as in my case-- I wonder if this is not an issue with the printers' release time on the DHCP address. I typically notice my problem every couple of weeks or so.

Anyway, thought we might be able to dig a bit deeper than just the fix that you suggest --I'll let you know if it works for my two printers.

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Answer 3

Jan 17, 2008 1:41 PM in response to David Schwartzer

Thanks so much for the tip. I was having the same problem, I now realize. I just thought it was an issue printing from the Mac since it worked OK from the PC, not that it was due to the printer sleeping.

Setting it to a static IP fixed it... now the Status Monitor will report sleep, where before it would just hang. I guess the Bonjour support is buggy in Sleep mode. A shame really. I wonder why more people don't run into this issue?

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