HP printer madness

[GregM]

I have an HP laserjet printer hooked to my in house network.
It works fine from my computer.
My wife's computer hooks to that network via wireless.
The printer will print it's test page from her computer, but it will not print from programs.
I have uninstalled it and reinstalled it a number of times in her computer.
When I got to System settings>printers it shows the same printer a couple times. I cannot delete them they keep reasserting themselves.

I'd like to purge all of the printers (etc) from her computer and start over. Is there a terminal command that will do that?
Suggestions?

[claydoh]

How is the printer connected to the network? Connected to a computer and shared, connected to a router, or is it wireless?

One thing that can be checked may be to go into System Settings and see if there are different driver variants for the printer model you have, HP often has a number of different ones for some printers, and one of them may be the 'good' one.

The multiple printer instances probably are related to how it is connected, but perhaps each computer is sharing it's configured printer?

[GregM]

The printer is hard wired to a router.

The odd thing is that everything was fine and then one day the printer would not print and I had to reinstall it using the HP software (on my computer).
It has worked fine from my computer since.
My wife does not use her computer/printer much so whatever happened to my computer could of happened to hers at the same time and she just didn't know it,

I turned off the printer and uninstalled the printer from her computer using the HP software and it still shows 2 instances of the printer (with slight variations) on her System Settings/Printers page.
I tried to use the cups software to uninstall those two printers and it said it did, but they are still there.

[GregM]

Something I did made it work.
Buttons I pushed...

Made sure the printer was the "Default" printer on both machines.
Unchecked the "Share this printer..." on both computers.
Deleted printer on wife's computer and reinstalled using HP software.

Somewhere along the line all the extra instances went away and now it only shows one instance on System Settings/Printers and HP software on both computers.
Her computer can print things now.
I'm a hero again.

Thanks for the thoughts.

[GregM]

The real puzzlement for me is why the setting for the printer just changed one day and it quit working.

[claydoh]

Dunno. I never use the HP gui stuff, as the actual drivers are usually already present, though not sure how this might effect this. I suspect the router may be a culprit, had one where i had a USB drive shared on one that kept disappearing and reappearing and changing mount points and names. But that was with sketchy DDWRT open firmware on a mediocre router.

[GregM]

Now it seems that every time I turn on my computer a new lan address has been assigned to the printer and of course it does not work.
Is there any way to set a fixed address for the printer ?
Yesterday it was
192.168.1.102
Today it is
192.168.1.2

Seems like there should be a way to have a fixed setting.

[Snowhog]

Check the router settings. Usually when a router issues a new IP it's because the 'lease' is expired (?). You should be able to set it so it doesn't.

[GregM]

How do I do that?

[Snowhog]

Is the router 'yours' or provided by your ISP?

[GregM]

The router is supplied by the local TelCo.
I have a switcher plugged in to that because the router only has 4 places to plug in things.

It's a
ZyXEL P-660HN-51
802.11n Wirelss ADSL2+ Gateway

Wish they made them with 8 or 10 plug in points.

[Snowhog]

You may not be able to access the routers settings, but you should call your telco and ask to talk to there Internet Support Techs. You may need to request a higher level tech support person. Tell them whats happening.

[GregM]

When I first got it I did access the settings (I was used to my Linksys) I adjusted it until it quit working and they had to send a field tech guy out. This did not make them happy.
They finally gave me a new router that I can't access.

[Snowhog]

Sucks to be 'dependent' on support that won't support.

[GreyGeek]

Pardon me for coming out of retirement and dropping in....

Set your wifi (if your cable modem is a modem/wifi combo that you can't access then ignore this suggestion, or, buy your own wifi and plug it into the cable modem) so tha it despenses IP addresses in a certain range, usually 192.168.1.100 to, say, 192.168.1.110, depending on how many IP addresses you need.
Then, attaching your printer to your wifi router, and using your printer's MAC address, set the printer's IP address to 192.168.1.99, which is OUTSIDE the range that your wifi's DHCP dispenses addresses. IOW, bind your MAC address to 192.168.1.99.
Leave your printer and wifi on.
I ran my HP Laser Jet P1606dn duplex laser printer for years that way. For my printer leaving it on was essential because turning it off and back on caused it to revert to a USB or LP connection template. That may not be an issue with your printer.

***sneeks back into retirement***