Here’s a quick tip for long time users of WiFi printers and all-in-one devices: Whenever you change the password of your WiFi router, remember to enter the new password in your WiFi device as well. Otherwise, the device will stop working. In hindsight, this is obvious but not when you’re frantically trying to troubleshoot the problem using guidelines that tend to led you astray.
While installing my HP Officejet J6400 / J6488 WiFi All-in-One (AIO) device comprising of inkjet printer, scanner, copier and fax, HP’s engineer had entered the WiFi password, that was how the AIO could connect to the wireless network, and I’ve been able to use the device successfully for a long time. But, since the AIO was installed more than a year ago, I didn’t remember to change the password on the AIO after recently changing the WiFi router password. As a result, when I tried firing a printout today from my Notebook PC via WiFi for the first time after changing the router password, I discovered that I couldn’t.
HP’s standard troubleshooting steps are: install the latest updates, disconnect the device, remove the power cord, reconnect the power cord after 60 seconds, uninstall the device driver, reinstall the device driver, etc. After trying out the first few steps and getting nowhere, I decided to sit back and think about this problem from first principles. Thankfully, I realized the obvious just before succumbing to the time consuming next step of uninstalling and reinstalling the printer driver.
After running the Network Configuration option from the AIO’s setup menu and entering the new WiFi router password there, the device is back on the network and is working fine.
If only HP’s website had pointed out this most obvious solution, I could’ve saved a couple of hours of my time and around 100MB from my broadband quota!