Photosmart C4580 Wont Connect to Wireless through Mavericks

I have the same old printer at home. Going by memory, long ago I found that the only simple way to have it working over wifi is to connect it once by wire to a computer/laptop (cable with usb on the one side but a different connector on the other end), then through the http interface set up the wifi characteristics (name, security, password). I found useful also to give a fixed ip number to the printer (e.g. fixed x.x.x.9 since I set my router dhcp to give numbers starting from 10).

Conversely you can reset the printer but then you have to (temporarily) change your wifi to use the printer defaults (I don't recall what they are, on the HP site there should be the usuer manual to be downloaded; however, they should also be printed directly).

In this way you can connect with the printer via wireless. Then set up the printer as described above with your standard network characteristics via the interface you'll find at http://your.printer.default.number. You can set the kind of network, pass and printer ip number that you want in your wifi standard configuration.

After this, turn off the printer, set again your wifi to be your std one, turn on the printer and this should be seen.

If you have a macbook you can also create a temporary net to connect to the printer once this has been reset to defaults so to not mess up with you main wifi.

I hope this helps, good luck.

what do you mean by: the http interface set up ?

I have the same problem, new macbook, no cd, no wireless.

Mavericks auto-detect the print if connected by USB

how to connect to it so I can set up the wireless? 😟

please help

edit: I can connect to the print via USB, but I can't see it as a USB connection. I don't know how to access it via Finder or Safari.

I recall that if you try to access the printer via http (i.e. if the printer has IP q.w.e.r. you write manually in your bowser address bar "http://q.w.e.r.) you get a printer interface from which you can set parameters.

So what I did (long ago, going by memory) was to:

1) reset the printer to defaults and print on a sheet the default configuration page, from which you read the default IP number for the printer. Let this be for example 10.0.10.3 [there is a menu in the smal screen, look at the printer manual you can find on the HP site]

2) disconnect the mac from the local wifi and set create from the mac a temporary ad hoc wifi network with characteristics 10.0.10.xxx such as to match the default IP configuration found in the previous point.

3) connect to the printer writing in any browser in the mac http://10.0.10.3/ ---> this should open the printer configuration panel

4) change the parameters that the printer uses to connect to wifi so to be able to connect to your local net (it was the second page in the panel)

[you can write the net SSID, the kind of security -WAP, WEP etc- the password. You can also set the printer to have a fixed IP number good for your local network and not to use DHCP -I found this to be necessary in my case, it depends on your router-; don't forget the insert also the router address as the gateway in this case]

5) turn off the temporary network on the mac and connect it again to the local wifi net

6) restart the printer

7) it should start with the new configuration and therefore be able connect to your local wifi; you can print the configuration sheet to check about parameters in case of trouble

If you can see the printer via USB and have access to a windows computer I recall that in windows there was an installer program via USB that allowed the direct configuration of point (4) above before disconnetting the usb and restarting the printer. There was also a similar installer for Mac which was obsoleted long ago since it did no longer work in Lion etc.

I hope this helps.

Good luck