Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

[fixthecopier]

Last week I seem to run across a lot of customers that did not understand hoe lightning strikes can effect their copiers. I went to a call on a bizhub c280. The ticket said that the bottom tray would not shut and made a grinding noise. When I arrived the drawer was closed and the machine was ready to copy. I started to test it and the touch panel would not respond. Then it worked. As I was standing there looking at it, the screen went black and the machine rebooted. WTF? It rebooted itself about every 2 to 3 minutes. I am thinking epromm or main board or any number of costly parts. I started a ticket with KMBS. I also noticed that the machine was plugged straight into the wall. I brought this to the attention of the user and she showed me the surge suppressor that they removed because it had a broken prong. I insiste they replace that day as we are having storms.

Back to the machine. KMBS ask me to unplug the network cable. I did and the machine seem to work fine. Hooked a laptop to it and it printed fine. The customer could not print to it. They then told me that they had a strike last week and had issues with their computers. As soon as I plugged the network cable in, the machine locked up, and rebooted. I had never seen such, but was sure they had smoked something in the network, the machine worked fine. The fact that the cable was killing it still confuses me.

I then went to an office that had two Ricoh 305's. Both had the network cables run straight into them. They said their computer guy did it. I had them get him on the phone and he told me he didn't know it was a surge suppressor. WTF?

Meanwhile, the c203 and another location less than a mile away was smoked from a lightning strike. They didn't have a service contract, didn't have anything plugged into a suppressor, had just paid $1500 to replace the color drums 2 weeks ago. They were screwed.

Same day, I am at Bizhub c552 working on a jam issue, check behind it and sure enough the network cable is bypassing the suppressor. I went to the shop , got a cable and corrected it.

I can't believe the lack of common sense people have when it comes to basic care of their office lifeline.

[slimslob]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

Most people who do think about a surge suppressor for the AC power on their computers don't think about their network connection or if they still have one their modem connection. Many years ago, when every thing was dial-up connections, we had a transcription service for some of the local hospitals. One of our transcriptionists live up in the mountains. She had a thunder storm come through one evening and the telephone pole near her house took a hit. The surge came in on the phone line to the modem board. Fried the modem board, the mother board and the power supply. It also took out parts of the hard disk. The damage to the hard drive was limited to the File allocation table (FAT) and the root directory. I got lucky. Since there are two copies of the FAT, I found that those clusters that were not readable on one copy could be read on the other. Using copy by absolute sector in Norton Utilities I was able to copy the entire contents of the drive to another and then combine the two partial FAT into one complete. Disk doctor was then able to find all the lost files and folders. Ultimately, the only thing lost were the file and folder names on the root directory.

Had she on anyone else in the house been on the phone, it might have done major injury. Who ever worked on the phone line the last time had bypassed the lightening arrester.

[blackcat4866]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

Actually I installed a lightening arrestor after my home got hit, frying 6 DSL filters, 3 phones, and the DSL modem.

We had a hospital account with Sharp MFP's. It was hit-and-miss which ones were connected through the surge, and which weren't. The ones without protection took the fax board (12). The ones with protection were fine. I found out later that they had to replace some of the phone cable. It was fused together. I don't know about any of the other hardware. =^..^=

[fixthecopier]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

So has anybody got any input as to how the network cable being plugged in was making the machine reboot?

[blackcat4866]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

Perhaps you've got a short in the switch or cabling? Some of that fax cabling I saw was a melted mess.

Did you try connecting the laptop via crossover to see is the print functions still work? Perhaps there was also damage to the MFP PWB. =^..^=

[Iowatech]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

I'm not familiar with Bizhubs, but I'll take a guess.
It sounds a little like network is trying to send something like firmware updates to the machine. As in on some HPs you can send the firmware to the machine like a print job.
If possible, you might see if IT can clear the print queue for those machines if you haven't done that already. Maybe see if they can change the machine's IP address in case the network has assigned the address to something else, too.
I suppose the network cables or something might be damaged and intermittently shorting out something important, at least that would be something I would consider if the machine worked properly when I hooked up my notebook. But I've haven't seen that type of problem yet, so I don't know.

[fixthecopier]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

I'm not familiar with Bizhubs, but I'll take a guess.
It sounds a little like network is trying to send something like firmware updates to the machine. As in on some HPs you can send the firmware to the machine like a print job.
If possible, you might see if IT can clear the print queue for those machines if you haven't done that already. Maybe see if they can change the machine's IP address in case the network has assigned the address to something else, too.
I suppose the network cables or something might be damaged and intermittently shorting out something important, at least that would be something I would consider if the machine worked properly when I hooked up my notebook. But I've haven't seen that type of problem yet, so I don't know.

The machine is with a defence contractor, so I cannot touch anything with the network. They have to bring in their guy, who has a security clearance. My responsibility ends at the copier. That makes solving some issues long and drawn out.

[nmfaxman]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

My contracts used to state that an approved surge suppressor have to be installed or any board failures are billable. Got some flack for that a few times, but told them that I always read a contract before I sign it and I told them before they signed it.
It wasn't in the small print in the terms, it was in bold letters on the front.

When you can isolate their network from the machine and it works fine, it is on them.
Many customers want free networking repairs by blaming the copier. A laptop hooked up through a crossover cable proves the machine is not at fault.

Makes figuring out their network problem billable or find an IT guy that knows what he is doing.

[slimslob]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

So has anybody got any input as to how the network cable being plugged in was making the machine reboot?

Random garbage coming causing the controller to go bananas trying to figure out what it was supposed to do. Something similar to print jobs that cause SC 899 on Ricohs.

Perhaps you've got a short in the switch or cabling? Some of that fax cabling I saw was a melted mess.

Did you try connecting the laptop via crossover to see is the print functions still work? Perhaps there was also damage to the MFP PWB. =^..^=

I think he said that was done in paragraph of the original post.

[gwaddle]

Re: Surge suppressors and lightning strikes.

I had a Sharp ARM550 a couple of weeks ago that would randomly reboot until I unplugged the network cable. We unplugged all the computers in the office and reconnected the cable to the copier and it worked fine. Then we plugged in one computer at a time until one of them caused the machine to reboot. I assumed it was trying to send a corrupt file or something like that. Turned it over to their computer guy.

[CompyTech]

Had a call today on a Kyocera 3550ci with a dead nic. Well I'm usually suspect when the customer says the nic is dead... Sure enough, the copier worked fine via crossover cable and my laptop. So I told em nope you gotta dead wall jack.


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