Printing Problems using OS X 10.9.4

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Have new iMac 2.9 GHz & two year old MacBook Air 1.7 GHz. Both are running 10.9.4.
My problem is with printing to a wireless printer. I have a HP Envy 111 that's a couple of years old and a brand new HP Officejet 6600. The problem occurs with either.
I'm able to install the printer just fine and print to it. However, within just a few minutes the connection fails when I try to print. Happens the same way with both the iMac and the MacBook Air.
Have deleted the printers, shut down the computers. Poered off the printer. Powered off the modem.
Reconnected the modem, then powered the printer, then rebooted computers, reinstalled printers, printed OK and then within just a few minutes the problem is back - failed connection.
Any suggestions?
Anyone else experiencing similar problems?
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
G'day and welcome to the forums.

As a rule of thumb HP do not like Macs much, and often drivers are not available, particularly after Software Updates. Epson and Brothers products seem to work much better. You might try this:-


http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14141
 
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Thanks harry2448 for trying to help me with the print problem.

I reset the printers on both the iMac and MacBook Air as prescribed in the link you provided.

Powered everything off and started up from scratch.

Modem, connected printer to wireless and finally booted up the machines.

Installed printer following OS X help advice to not use HP software to install the printer.

Chose and email and tried to print and followed the prompts to add the printer, which was successful on both machines (installed as an AirPrint printer).

Works fine for 10 minutes or so but then if I try to print, the message is that printer is not connected. In system preferences (printers & scanners) the message is printer in use.

So when I delete the print job from the queue, the message in system preferences goes back to printer idle.

I've tried your prescribed method twice but the problem consistently reoccurs.

I do appreciate you trying to help. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but have been using Macs for 20+ years and have normally been able to sort out most issues intuitively, but this problem has me totally lost and frustrated.
 
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late 2012 mini w/SSD
(installed as an AirPrint printer).

You know the Airprint driver is a minimum-subset driver, and the intent of Airprint is for mobile devices like iPhone and iPad to print without any driver required?
(in other words, I don't think you want to use the Airprint driver on a Mac)

Have you gone into your router's setup web page and given each printer a "reserved" IP address (within the subnet your local network uses, of course), so they won't try to get a new (possibly different) IP address?
 
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gsahli Thanks for the comments

Installing from OS x only gave the AirPrint option even though software is up to date at 10.9.4

So I reset the printer and downloaded the HP print utility for Mavericks and installed the printer using that utility which provided the full driver sets.

Problem has changed a bit. Seems to occur after computer wakes from sleep mode.

Try printing and get the "printer not connected error". If I delete the job from the queue and then use the HP print utility to find the printer it does. I can print a test page just fine. And then if I go back and print the job that had just failed, it works fine. Don't have to reboot.

But the problem keeps reoccurring after the sleep/wake cycle on the computer.

I don't know how to access the router. Actually, the wireless network is all connected to a wireless modem (CISCO) provided by CenturyLink. That's beyond my knowledge/comfort level.
 
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For the Wake from sleep issue, I recommend you go to Network Prefs, and first (if you're using WiFi) make sure Wifi is at the top of the list on the left side of the dialog/pane. Yes, you can drag and drop wifi from wherever it is to the top of the list. Next, go to the Location pull-down menu, and create a new location and name it something like home_wifi.

I believe your printing issue is caused by your Mac requesting a new IP address when starting up/waking. Doing the above is meant to stop that.

Every router I've seen has a built-in web server admin web page. Typically, you use a browser and go to the router's address like this: http//192.168.0.1 (or whatever you routers address happens to be).
You'll probably need to know the router's username and password from the manual. "admin" and "1234" are common initial ones.
 
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Thanks to all who tried to help. Finally solved the problem. Reset the print system and then installed the printer using the IP option and manually assigned an IP number about 20 digits higher than the IP number that was being assigned automatically. Communication problems solved. :)
 
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good for you!
 

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