HP Photosmart C4580 not detecting wireless network

none of the above methods works for me. only the usb works. can someone please clarify the instructions because I think more than a few steps are being left out. Do I need to configure my wireless router at all or can this all be done with my macbook and hp printer?

Boz and Joey have it right! I cannot tell you how grateful I am. Try their methods (they are essentially the same) - they do work! And, no, I don't think you have to configure your router - that's what HP will tell you and it's not true.

I'll try to add a few tidbits that I haven't seen here:

1) Though it may seem elementary (I'm a novice user), but you have to first create the "hp set-up" network referred to in those solutions. The HP rep helped me do this and to be honest, I've forgotten the steps (this was a marathon day of phone calls and fixes - perhaps someone else can post?)

2) You have to have the wireless function turned on to access the printers settings via the IP address method as described.

3) Only the print function will work when the device is connected to the Airport Base Station via USB cable; the scanner will not work if only connected this way! Ridiculous to me but you have to use the printer's wireless to connect to the airport in order to have successful scanning AND printing. That's what was driving me crazy, I could print fine but I couldn't f*ing scan and then when I tried to reinstall, I couldn't get the printer/scanner to pick up my network even though my base station was right there!

Talk about clueless - the HP rep and the Apple rep told me that they thought something was wrong with my base station (Apple even offered to send me a new one) even though (a) the base station is brand new and (b) everything worked with this set-up on my old base station.

Hard to believe that this is not something on everyone's radars; I mean, how many people have this printer and airport, especially when they're being bundled?

Anyway, hope that helps. Excuse me while I go cancel the "replacement" base station Apple wanted to send me...

did you ever resolve this issue? I have the same problem, where the printer goes to sleep and won't wake unless i cycle power.

Hey Bos...

I might give your solution a shot tomorrow. My situation is slight different in that I have a Windows computer hooked to the printer wirelessly. I can live with losing this connection IF I am able to connect with my MB. When you ran through your procedure, did you have another computer that was able to connect in the wireless mode?

I had the same problem you guys had.. I have a linksys 160N router, and after reading some posts here and there I changed the standard channel to 1 on my router and all of a sudden the printer was able to detect and join my network. Don't ask me why..

The steps were pretty much these: run setup, connect the printer via usb cable, choose "wireless configured via USB". Do that while connected to your home network and the setup will detect it and ask for the password (if any) to configure the printer.

My problem was that at this time the printer were not being able to join the network. After changing the channel on the router it worked (rebooting the router alone didn't work).

After that, I was able to connect to the printer via IP or bonjour.

Now, I came to this page while searching for a way to protect the embedded webserver.. it doesn't seem to have a admin password, so be aware of it and configure your router's firewalls so your neighbors won't mess with your printer's network configuration. Bad neighbors, they're mean..

See ya.

+1 for boz and joey

Just bought a macbook and hp c4580, got stuck on with the crazy hp install software. I followed boz's instruction and it worked A-OK.

I understand cleary how this solution works but I cannot understand how hp got it so wrong.

Thanks again.

This will sound ridiculous but I tried all kinds of things, some of them suggested above, and then went for the obvious - disabled the wireless and then enabled again. All worked fine. I'm sure a lot of people try this first - it just took me time to try the simple answer rather than the complicated.... Not sure whether to feel stupid, relieved or both....

Thanks to all those who struggled before me and left their posts ... I just bought a C4580 from a friend and was facing the same problem. I read your posts and was stumped on how I was supposed to create a "hpsetup" network and connect to it with my Airport Express, then it occurred to me to use iStumbler, that wonderful gem of Mac freeware. So here is what I did:

1. Ran iStumbler. It detected Bonjour and gave me the HP "id" for my printer which was HPF44Bxx.
2. Used iStumbler to get the "World Wide Web" address of the printer and copied and pasted that URL into Safari... that gave me the printer's internal web server and displayed a page with all the settings. I didn't need to change anything. I left IP and DNS on automatic.

3. Ran 'HP Printer Utility'. I selected "HP Photosmart C4500 Series" (the printer the HP installation software created) with its lovely red house symbol (offline) and then I clicked on "Add Manually' and Saints Be Praised! a new printer popped up with the name 'HPF44Bxx'.

4. Now I'm printing, scanning and cooking with gas.

Followup to my earlier post:

My step 3 was a red herring. Discovery of the F44xxx id was interesting but not key to solving the problem.

This is the key step that I left out:

3b. Go to System Preferences and choose Printer and Fax, then + to Add Printer. The "connection type" (Default, AppleTalk, Bluetooth, IP, etc.) to pick is "Default" so that any Bonjour-enabled and connected printers will be found.
3c. Now your lovely C4580 appears again with a new name including F44xxx, which you can rename to your heart's desire. I called mine HP C4500 Bonjour.

4. NOW you're cooking with gas.

Good luck everyone.

IT WORKS! It was as simple as....

I have tried all of the above and more! Then, I went to system preferences/print & fax and
DELETED my wireless printer
clicked on the + to add a new printer
rather than adding an IP printer on the pull-down menu, I added an "hp jetdirect socket"
added my ip address
and it FOUND the printer!
I unplugged my USB and LO & Behold...it works! Thanks to all -- especially kicks4u2 who planted the idea that it might NOT be an IP setup!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was about ready to take this printer out Office Space style, as I have been trying to get it to work wirelessly for several days now with no luck. Here are a few things that helped me, that I didn't see in other posts:

1) I connected my MacBook into my network with a cable instead of trying to use the wireless network and the hp setup network I created (by going to the Airport symbol and selecting Create Network).

2) I got my IP address from the screen in the HP Setup Wizard (where you get the error message that you need to have access to your network), because printing the configuration and wireless network test report from the printer didn't show my IP address.

3) I left the settings for connecting to the internet on "Automatic IP" and "Automatic DNS Server" in the printer page you access by typing in the IP address.

4) Because I didn't find that weird code that Ellee H. pointed out as a red herring, my printer was just called Photosmart C4580 (the one on the list that doesn't say connected by USB).

I hope this is a little helpful, and saves someone else the stress this process has caused me! 🙂 Good luck all!

I had my wireless connecting problem solved bij CHANGING MY AIRPORT NAME wich contained an & caracter! Same counts most probably for + and * etc.

Sorry, I mean: NETWORK name (instead of Airport name)

I have spent the past 4 hours trying to get this printer working. I seem to have the same issues many other people are having. I will describe the numerous errors below.

I initially installed the HP software from the CD provided with the printer, everything went fine up until I the confirmation of my "IP Settings" in the setup assistant. When I click continue there is a brief pause the following message is displayed:

Device Not Reachable:
The network configuration was successfully downloaded to the device. However to continue configuring the device in network, your Mac must have access to the device. So please make sure that your Mac has access to the Network : "Network Name Here" and retry.

Upon clicking "retry" this notice continues to reappear every time without fail. This leads nowhere, resulting in me quitting the application (as I cannot continue any further).

The second problem I have, is because the HP Setup Assistant doesn't get to fully install, I don't have "hpsetup" showing in the top menu Airport status bar. However I can (sometimes, without explanation) get "hpsetup" to appear in the Airport status bar by selecting "Create Network" and then entering the word "hpsetup". The familiar airport top icon "bars" now change to a grayed out computer, my internet connection is no longer active.

I read that a way to work around this issue is to type in the printers IP address, which I found by by pressing the wireless button on the printer > wireless settings > print network configuration page. The resulting printed page contains the IP 192.168.1.69. If i type this into safari nothing loads and the connection attempts time out.

I read about using Bonjour to somehow connect to the IP address, however this didnt work for me. Bonjour is not recognizing that there is even a printer present. I dont really know how people are associating their printers with bonjour, as nothing is linked to my set up. Argh.

Regardless of the outcome of this I am going to shortly return this printer for a full refund. I want to detail these issues for other peoples benefit so they know they are not the only one.

I have followed every previous guide posted, and while some have given me some hope, none have worked for me. I suppose the main issue is that the printer will not recognize that my mac has a wireless connection (which is does, and is functioning, as I am writing this post while connected). Very frustrating and has really put me off what I thought would be a simple and easy wireless printer set up.

I've just bought the C4580, and it connected without any problems by following the instructions and using the installation CD. It's now printing and scanning wirelessly. I have a mac book running 10.4 and a netgear wireless access point with MAC address access control. I did have to disable the MAC address access control until the printer was connected.

I guess that HP have heard the complaints and have fixed the software.