How to ping a printer every 10 min

Somehow 10 printers are falling off the network after being idle. As soon as I ping to the printer it immediately start to print. Is there a way to create a bat file so that a machine can constantly ping to it every 10 min?

I created a bat file with the following code

c:\windows\system32\ping 192.168.1.4 -t

but it just repeats itself.

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Comments

Unforg1ven

Are the printers simply going into a sleep/power save mode? For the scripts, I believe powershell is a good option to set up a time interval required.

RobertKaucher

Just set it to run every 10 minutes as a scheduled task (without the -t). But this does not address the issue. Only answers your question.

This is not something I would use PoSh for. There is Start-Sleep -Seconds but why do that for 10 minutes? That's better for a scheduled task.

SteveO86

Unforg1ven wrote: »

Are the printers simply going into a sleep/power save mode? For the scripts, I believe powershell is a good option to set up a time interval required.

I would put my bets on that one. Printers are more advanced nowadays with internal HDD's (poses security issues), email integration, FTP abilities, etc. They have more settings they you might first initially think.

Of course I have some printers from a particular company that have given me various problems with it dropping off the network, and at that point a tech from their company comes and reloads the firmware on the printer.

The printer tech will then proceed to say "I'm not a network guy, but I think there's a problem with the network. When you print double sided to the printer the data gets corrupt in the network and crashes the printer"... That right there takes the cake on the stupidest thing I ever heard with a serious tone.

passcert23

I knew I shouldn't have check this post before I go to sleep. haha. Here's the whole story.

I am a Desktop Tech and I support this building and is the only building where this problem is occurring. We support HP Laserjet and Sharp Multifunction printers. The 9 printers I mentioned are a mixture of those and each have a print queue. I check the settings on the HP and it only allow me to set it so that the printer stay awake for a max of 8 hours I believe. There was no way for me to disable sleep mode altogether.

I talked to Network Infrastructure and they say is out of their hands. As long as there are blinking lights there is nothing they can do. They suggest I talk to HP which I did. HP suggest I use universal drivers but they think is a network issue. I do feel the same way too but I think it might be the switch. Strange thing is if you hook a PC to that port it work just fine. Is just printers.

I was thinking the scheduled task but I don't really want to mess with that since Desktop Engineer are in charge of that. Policy and such... I work as a contractor for the govt... sucks... I was meaning to just give the user this quick bat file so that they can run it when the printer goes to sleep. I told them about ping but it just went over their heads.

Pash

passcert23 wrote: »

I knew I shouldn't have check this post before I go to sleep. haha. Here's the whole story.

I am a Desktop Tech and I support this building and is the only building where this problem is occurring. We support HP Laserjet and Sharp Multifunction printers. The 9 printers I mentioned are a mixture of those and each have a print queue. I check the settings on the HP and it only allow me to set it so that the printer stay awake for a max of 8 hours I believe. There was no way for me to disable sleep mode altogether.

I talked to Network Infrastructure and they say is out of their hands. As long as there are blinking lights there is nothing they can do. They suggest I talk to HP which I did. HP suggest I use universal drivers but they think is a network issue. I do feel the same way too but I think it might be the switch. Strange thing is if you hook a PC to that port it work just fine. Is just printers.

I was thinking the scheduled task but I don't really want to mess with that since Desktop Engineer are in charge of that. Policy and such... I work as a contractor for the govt... sucks... I was meaning to just give the user this quick bat file so that they can run it when the printer goes to sleep. I told them about ping but it just went over their heads.

Do network team already provision a network monitoring tool of some kind? Like "Whats Up" or something similar?

If so, you could ask them to add the devices to their monitoring tools and send you email alerts directly for now?

Just a thought.

Pash

gateway

I'm struggling to see what the issue is here.

Printers will go to sleep especially MFP's, they are like that by design. When you say you ping them and they wake up, that is normal behaviour - ours do that too.

On the back of that, if icmp is enough to wake them up, then sending a print job should also wake them up. If my printer is asleep and I send a print job it will wake up. Do yours not do this?

Lee H

Have you heard of LOOK @ LAN, this can ping an IP range that you specify and you also specify how often, this is by no means a fix to your issue just a temporary solution until you find the real problem

good luck!!

MentholMoose

Agreed, sleep mode shouldn't cause a problem. The job will just stay queued up until the printer warms up, at which point the job will print. If the problem is that the job is an unwanted delay then sleep mode may be the culprit, otherwise I think it is something else.

passcert23

This is exactly what is going on.

-User will print to printer and the print job will get stuck in the print queue.
-If you don't ping to the printer right away it will just error out or in most case just get stuck in the print queue.
-Now when I ping to the printer the first packet will "Time Out" and the remaining three packets will be successful.

RobertKaucher

passcert23 wrote: »

I talked to Network Infrastructure and they say is out of their hands. As long as there are blinking lights there is nothing they can do. They suggest I talk to HP which I did. HP suggest I use universal drivers but they think is a network issue. I do feel the same way too but I think it might be the switch. Strange thing is if you hook a PC to that port it work just fine. Is just printers.

I was thinking the scheduled task but I don't really want to mess with that since Desktop Engineer are in charge of that. Policy and such... I work as a contractor for the govt... sucks... I was meaning to just give the user this quick bat file so that they can run it when the printer goes to sleep. I told them about ping but it just went over their heads.

This makes no sense at all. Suddenly things work after the first ping packet is received? It does not follow that suddenly the nbetwrok is ok after you send an ICMP packet over the wire. Try to observe the printers as this is occuring. Are they asleep and then waking up after they get hit witht he ping packet? If so, on one printer turn off the sleep mode and see if the problem occurs again. If it does not occur on this single printer then you know it is something other than the network.

I cannot even imagine an instance in which a magical ICMP packet will cause a network issue to suddenly fix itself. Good luck wiht this!

undomiel

Plug in Wireshark next to one of the printers and see what traffic is being sent to and from it. That may give you some clues.

MentholMoose

So do you have a print server with all the queues? What OS is it running? With a windows server I have not had any similar problems with printers in sleep mode. What specific printer models are you using?

Devilsbane

I've seen some printers like that, and I can't explain it. Printers enter sleep mode to save power. But once a job hits the queue, they should wake up and print. I used to work with one printer that required me to get up and click ok on the printer to wake it up. I have no idea why...

What good is sleeping if it can't come back up? Might as well just shut the whole thing down then.

And I agree with the others, a bat file set on a schedule sounds like it would work for this. And I don't see why this would mess with your network team. Set the schedule up on your personal workstation, and they never need to know.

passcert23

How do I make the scheduled task to run in the background?

Here's what I tried so far. I created a shortcut to the bat>modify that shortcut to run as minimized> create a new task>type in the exact location of the shortcut> when it run it still popup instead of being minimized.

I also tried to run the task under another profile but when it I click on run when user is not log in it prompt me for my credential. I logged into my adm acct as well as a normal user and it will not accept it. strange.