Negative Lifecounts

[yeti]

I'm having an issue with allot of HP printers coming up with Negative life counts, I did a search on HP and found this KB Post.

does anyone know why HP devices will randomly remove pages from the life count?

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet/NEGATIVE-Page-Counts/td-p/6406452#.UyHXX_ldXTo
On many different models of the HP laserjets the life count goes backwards.

I have trawled through the forums and have found this issue raised a few times before but i have yet to find any answers.

We have thousands of printers in our company, alot of them HP Laserjets, many different models. We monitor all our machines through SNMP software. When we looked at the lifecount of the machines we saw machines were dropping thousands of prints. To check it wasn't the software we physically went to the machien and printed off config pages which showed the drop. Suddenly, machines that had been installed a few years ago had only done 200 prints!

We manually took a reading off some of the machines - a week later when the SNMP alerted us to a drop, we went to the machine and the reading was lower - it had defintely lost counts.

I also know for a fact this is not isolated to us. I've seen it at other companys. Please can you help push this issue forward or have a resolution.

For example:
The Printer was showing a page count of 56,000 prints, then 20,000.

- I believe they drop mutiple times, sometimes for less than 10 prints, some as many as 40,000.

Models i have seen affected: (I've added what i think is the release date)

Laserjet color LaserJet 55502002
LaserJet 2100 Series 1999
Laserjet 400 color M451n 2011
Laserjet 4000 1999
Laserjet 4050 1999
LaserJet 4200 2002
Laserjet 4300 2002
Laserjet 4345 2004
LaserJet 500 color M551 Apr-12
Laserjet 5550 Jun-05
Laserjet 600 M601 Feb-12
LaserJet 8000 2000
Laserjet 9050 Jun-05
Laserjet CP3525 Jul-05
Laserjet P2055dnJun-05
Laserjet P3005 Jul-05
Laserjet P3005 series Jun-05
Laserjet P3010 series Jul-05
Laserjet P4014 Jun-05
Laserjet P4015 Jun-05

- We have tried Firmware upgrades on a sample but this had no affect. I suspected it wouldn't help as this issue seems to go through alot of machines and lots of different firmware versions.
- It's 100% not someone zeroing off the machine.

The problem with the issue is that unless you are looking for it then it's unliekly you will spot it.

Some of the reasons it's important for the lifecount to be correct.
- Alot of machiens are charged cost per copy nowadays. If these counts are incorrect there are going to be issues.
- 2nd hand machines could have a much higher count than the machine desplays.
- Audits for companies will be incorrect/how much a company is printing.

[theengel]

When I first started working on HP, I remember trying to reset the maint count on a 4000. The instructions I was using were not very clear, and I remember, at one point, having more pages on the maintenance count than there were on the machine--I had changed the page count number. I don't even remember how I did it, I just know that I did.

Is it possible an inexperienced tech is having trouble with older models, and it's not actually counting backwards? Like--have you printed a config, printed five more pages, and then reprinted the config to show that it definitely counted 5 clicks back instead of forward?

[yeti]

tired that and the pages do count. it seems like randomly the printer will remove a number of pages. I did find a HP document that said HP Firmware will remove blank pages form a life count, but this seems to happen when a print job is duplex and only the 2nd page is blank.

this is getting crazy my company can't bill for these devices. we have have to scrap them.

[Wild Bill]

I have never seen it. I am responsible for over 1000 hp printers, many of the the same models listed so you think i would have seen this. I suggest locking the printers. probably it is a disgruntled employee or someone trying to save some money.

[sjh]

Hi Yeti,

I was the one who posted that on HP discussion forum. I've updated it now with our finding.

HP have replicated the issue on their machines and now believe this is a bug in the firmware - they are working on a fix. It is not due to anyone changing anything on the machine.

I can't stress enough the importance of logging a case with HP. Make sure you show your documentations - i.e meter readings before the drop, then after - even if it's from a 3rd party software. They are now aware of the issue so people need to log cases to show how widespread it is.

Like you i have had a fair few comments that this has never been spotted by people who have worked with HP printers for years. I never spotted it for a long time until we had a machine that lost 18,000 prints! Since i've employed some monitoring software i have seen how widespread it is. In some instances it is only 50 pages at a time but this adds up. The machines continue to loose pages.

The reason i believe not many people spot it is because you actually have to be looking for the issue or being employing an snmp monitoring tool that can detect the drop in readings.

Like i said before, some machines will drop very few pages at a time.

If a machine is at 100 prints - and you take reading
100
if it then drops 50 (dropping 50 pages) prints but you don't check it until it has done another 70 prints - it will read 120 prints, thus looking like it's done 20 pages. It has however actually done an additional 70 prints. How often do people take meter readings manually off machines? If you're servicing a machine you may see it once every few months or so, so the likelihood of you taking a reading that is lower than before is very unlikely. Some snmp monitoring tools now have alerts that will detect this. I've been able to have a config page before a drop, dashed to the machine when it was detected and taking another. Sure enough, it had lost counts.

All our machines are locked down and we have a record of when/what work is done on them. It's a firmware issue - log a case.

[Judd]

So is the software constantly monitoring page counts on a daily or hourly basis? Is there still the possibility of loosing page counts?


I have seen that HP printers only record page counts every 10 pages. I have tested and verified this on the P3005, 42/43 series. This was a consistent issue, not random. If you do a NVRAM clear and have zero pages, you can print a couple config pages and get a page count of 6. turn it off and back on and print another config page and get zero.

never seen them drop hundreds or thousands of prints

Is there a service bulletin for this? seems like MPS software would have to track pages by software and not printer page counts

[sjh]

The snmp software takes a reading every 5 minutes. It's reading from the MIB of the machine. It has been confirmed it is not a fault on the monitoring software. I have taken a config page off a machine, waited for a drop and then printed off a second config page as soon as it alerted. Sure enough there was substantial drop (1000 pages) It didn't 0 off so it wasn't caused by a NVRAM reset or anyone changing it. If it was a software issue from third party monitoring you wouldn't see the drop on the config pages.

There isn't a bulletin on this that i know of. They weren't even aware of the issue when we sent it in. They are now getting further cases from other customers.
I have only seen this issue on hp laserjet machines. No other makes - xerox, canon, lexmark etc do this.

[yeti]

SJH did HP give you a case number? is it something I can reference in my call to HP?

[pjones]

Did HP ever provide a solution? This is 5-years later and I'm seeing this in our fleet that we service and maintain. I've started in a new position where I actually monitor a system that uses SNMP to monitor devices for pages printed and service issues. Right now I'm in clean up mode because our system hasn't been monitored or maintained correctly and it seems like every day I'm finding machines that actually show a negative number of pages printed.