[Dead] Multiple copiers locking up

[dasbrun]

We have multiple copiers at a customers location. They are located in 2 different buildings, the 2 machines in the same building are not near each other. It is a large manufacturing plant with multiple buildings.

We have a MX5141, MX4141 and a MX2610. Each machine is displaying similar symptoms. They recieve a print job and they completely lock up. The display no longer shows the desk units, finishers or any other installed options, shows only tray 1. On the 41 series machines it will show a print job in the spool and it will say rendering, on the 10 series it only says finisher not available and it no longer sees the finisher and there is no print job showing in the spool.

We have already changed the network speed from gigabyte to megabyte speed, switched 1 of them from full duplex to half duplex, turned off WSD and most of the other non essential network functions. Tested the outlets, 2 of the machines are now on dedicated lines, testing at or right around 120v with drops to no lower than 115v during runs. Sits at .125v on neutral to ground while idle and moves to no more than 3v neutral to ground when running.

Each machine is on an ESP surge protector. At this point we have taken the network out the ESP and run directly from the wall to the copier on 2 of the machines. We did that this AM and are waiting to see how it affects the situation.

From there our next step it to return with a laptop and crossover cable and see what happens when we try and isolate the print environment from their network.

Any other suggestions or bright ideas would be welcome!

Brun

[ntbann]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

I just had a mx 4141 a customer was running on a mx 4110 driver that was locking up the machine. it was just sitting there rendering. Switched driver to correct one and symptom went away. Just a thought.

[bdcrandall13]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

If you look around on this forum and do a quick google search you will see that these types of issues are happening more and more frequently. I have not seen or found a cause as of yet but I did resolve an issue this morning on an older machine. Customer had an AR-M257 with the network card installed. They have used this MFP for 5 or 6 years now with no print issues at all. All of a sudden yesterday 1 client (Win 7 64 bit) could not print to the machine. All other users could print as normal. This client could print to other printers on the network and installed locally. It did not matter what file type or application the user was printing from.
I tried changing the IP port settings from RAW to LPR with queue set to Ip, set the job to spool every way that it could be set to spool, updated driver to latest version, etc.
I found an article this morning stating to try using Sharp's S2 print port rather than standard TCPIP. I installed the printer using the setup program that comes with the driver package (PCL6) thinking it would install the S2 port type as well. It did not do this though. I had the same result with this install. I removed the printer again and installed the S2 port using the setup application that is also included when you download the driver package. I then opened it and set up the port with the IP needed for this printer. I used the Add a printer wizard, selected the S2 port that I just created under local port, selected the driver and printed a test page. I got a print out immediately. I printed from every application that I could open without issues. I made no other changes to the driver other than the S2 port.
If you haven't tried this, it may be worth a shot.
Good luck.

[dasbrun]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

Update:

Thanks for the reply's much appreciated!

We went back with the Network tech and he put his network meter onto the network cables. We found that the MX4141 had a broken RJ45 plug. Swapped out the cable and the packet loss we had been experiencing appeared to go away. We will check again in the AM. The 2610 machine appears to be a different problem. According to the network meter, it's taking unusually long for the switch/router to issue an IP address and relay the information back to the physical location.

We will be returning tomorrow to test the 3rd machine, ran out of time today.

Thanks again in advance for the help.

Brun

[blackcat4866]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

We have multiple copiers at a customers location. They are located in 2 different buildings, the 2 machines in the same building are not near each other. It is a large manufacturing plant with multiple buildings.

... Tested the outlets, 2 of the machines are now on dedicated lines, testing at or right around 120v with drops to no lower than 115v during runs. Sits at .125v on neutral to ground while idle and moves to no more than 3v neutral to ground when running.

Each machine is on an ESP surge protector. At this point we have taken the network out the ESP and run directly from the wall to the copier on 2 of the machines. We did that this AM and are waiting to see how it affects the situation.

From there our next step it to return with a laptop and crossover cable and see what happens when we try and isolate the print environment from their network.

Any other suggestions or bright ideas would be welcome!

Brun

3vac ground to neutral isn't that great. Ideally it would be less than 0.5vac. I've seen grd-to-neutral as low as 1.5vac cause problems.

If it comes up often enough, perhaps you can justify keeping on-hand an Uninterruptable Power Supply, for diagnostic purposes. The UPS can do something that a Surge Suppressor cannot. When the voltage sags, the UPS can prop it up for short periods of time. I have three customers that considered it the best choice to solve their power problems ... and it works.

And yes, the crossover cable is a great way to further diagnose the network issue.

Kudos for covering a lot of possibilities right up front, and documenting the details. =^..^=

[mojorolla]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

We have had 4141 and 5151 drop offline and lock. We are currently testing a solution I heard from a service manager in Pittsburgh. Now, being from Cleveland, I could care less about what someone from Pittsburgh thought.
However, I have a problem to solve.
He said by placing a plain old 100mb switch between the MFP and the customer network, the machines stayed online. We put one in on Monday and so far, I hope I don't jinx it, we have not had any issues.

[Iowatech]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

For what it is worth, if this is just a printing issue, I've been seen bad print jobs cause machines to act in undesirable ways.
As in a program on the computer sends unusual information to the print driver, and that results in the machine getting nonsensical and wrong data. The machine interprets the data as best it can, but it typically ends with the printer doing unexpected things.
Something to check if time permits I guess.

[Akitu]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

I have a report from another tech within the company that some new switches are getting what's referred to as "Energy Efficient Ethernet", causing network drops. The link and activity lights on the MFP were solid instead of blinking, can't connect to web page and pinging gives results anywhere from 1ms to 7ms and scan to email would not work.

Issue here sounds like a packet loss issue which was already addressed with the broken RJ45 connector head, but that doesn't necessarily eliminate the switch as a cause. Your remaining problems still seem to be packet loss issues, has the customer's IT looked at their equipment?

[dasbrun]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

We are going to let them run this AM for a few hours and go back in and see what the results of the changes we made yesterday are.

Of the 3 machines, 1 we haven't made any changes, 1 was a bad ethernet cable and the 3rd appeared to be a network issue when we went back late yesterday.

We are planning on testing the network connections on all machines today and then checking with the IT department to find out if they made any recent changes as all this started recently.

Thanks again.

Brun

[tkrumrai]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

We are going to let them run this AM for a few hours and go back in and see what the results of the changes we made yesterday are.

Of the 3 machines, 1 we haven't made any changes, 1 was a bad ethernet cable and the 3rd appeared to be a network issue when we went back late yesterday.

We are planning on testing the network connections on all machines today and then checking with the IT department to find out if they made any recent changes as all this started recently.

Thanks again.

Brun

All of these sound like Firmware Fixes on the SHARPS MFP's. Needs to be Ver 8.10

[dasbrun]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

I have a report from another tech within the company that some new switches are getting what's referred to as "Energy Efficient Ethernet", causing network drops. The link and activity lights on the MFP were solid instead of blinking, can't connect to web page and pinging gives results anywhere from 1ms to 7ms and scan to email would not work.

Issue here sounds like a packet loss issue which was already addressed with the broken RJ45 connector head, but that doesn't necessarily eliminate the switch as a cause. Your remaining problems still seem to be packet loss issues, has the customer's IT looked at their equipment?

We did see the IT department late on Friday afternoon. This was after putting our network meter on their network and it showed packet loss at all three locations. Their response was "We have not had any problems with any of our HP printers and we have a Canon which hasn't had any problems, it's not our network."

So our goal today is to try and demonstrate the network is in fact the issue. We are going to print via crossover. We are also going to attempt to get them to dedicate a single PC for printing for the day and run that single local PC via crossover for a single day.

Thanks again for the info.

[Akitu]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

We did see the IT department late on Friday afternoon. This was after putting our network meter on their network and it showed packet loss at all three locations. Their response was "We have not had any problems with any of our HP printers and we have a Canon which hasn't had any problems, it's not our network."

So our goal today is to try and demonstrate the network is in fact the issue. We are going to print via crossover. We are also going to attempt to get them to dedicate a single PC for printing for the day and run that single local PC via crossover for a single day.

Thanks again for the info.

If they have that much equipment I'm going to make the assumption they're a mid to large sized company and probably at that point have multiple switches. Those HPs and Canon may very well be on a different switch, which is why they're experiencing no issues. People actually pay these IT guys?

[copytechonline]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

What a coincidence, I have a customer with 4 older machines ranging from the MX2300 to the 4501 and have been running these machines for many years with no problems whatso ever, then 3 weeks ago we started recieving calls about them locking up. First one would go down and then be followed by the others over the next few hours. its got me a little stumped as it will not do it when a tech is there (typical) there are no fault codes logged and the print jobs all show OK. The machine will not print, copy, scan or fax whilst in this state and the touch panel and buttons are unresponsive. I had thought it may be a corrupt print job that someone sent and when it fails to print they send it to the next machine and so on causing a cascade effect, my other thought was some incompatability issue with something new added to the network recently.
I have had their IT dept update all the drivers for the latest (I know they wont be new but they were later than what was installed already) and firmware as been renewed on all machines.
I have spoken to Sharp Tech in the UK and as usual they have never experienced this before lol... They suggested it may be down to an antivirus program scanning the copier causing it to lock up, apart from that im still non the wiser just waiting for it to happen again.

[Akitu]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

Most common causes of lockup are voltage issues or failing network equipment. Have them check the latter and they'll probably find it's a switch acting up. Voltage problems between 4 machines seem highly unlikely unless it's an archaic building that hasn't been updated in 50+ years.

[tkrumrai]

Re: Multiple copiers locking up

The most common "lock up" fix for ALL of the series you are talking about is the firmware! Your switches are just FINE! Although the WSD DOES cause issues, they are not "rendering" issues...they are more scanning related.
(30 years working on SHARP equip)... Get the lastest firmware!