Good morning everyone, I have a customer who brought me a CP5525 for repair with an unusual problem. The machine will not get past the initialization stage if the network cable is plugged in. If the network cable is removed, the machine comes up to ready. Originally I suspected a bad formatter board, but upon replacing it I'm getting the same problem. With the network cable plugged in, the machine will not get past the initialization stage. I know the cable I'm using is good as I can plug another printer into it and it works just fine. The formatter board has a green light on the nic port when the cable is plugged in, the "smiley face" light is on steady and the "heartbeat" light blinks twice and pauses, then blinks twice again and continues to do so, which all seems normal. Additionally, while the machine is still trying to initialize, I can press the print engine test button and it prints out a normal looking test page. I don't know if I should just leave the machine alone and see if it ever fully initializes, but no idea how long I should wait, I've left it for as long as 10 minutes and it still doesn't initialize. If I unplug the nic cable and allow the machine to go ready I can print out an event log and it shows no errors. Obviously, it's used as a network printer so it needs to be able to come ready with a NIC cable plugged into it. At this point I've no idea of what my next step should be so any help or ideas would be appreciated.
I left the nic cable disconnected and allowed the printer to come ready. I then plugged the nic cable in and attempted to install the printer on my local test network. I can ping the printer and it responds, I can install the printer normally, however it does not print a test page. When it goes to print the test page the printer spools up as if it's warming up to print, but then spools back down. During this time, the nic port on the machine shows solid green and blinking yellow as if it's receiving information from the network, but there is no change on the screen and the leds on the front panel show no change. Eventually the print job times out and shows that the print failed. If I attempt to print from say microsoft word or notepad, I get the same symptoms. This happens with both the new formatter board and the original one.
Here in the building we have another CP5525 installed as a network printer that runs fine so I went and printed out its configuration and settings page and compared them to the printer I'm working on and they are identical, except for IP addresses obviously. At this point I have the printer pushed off to the side until I can get some ideas on what to look at next and I've worked on other printers and used this same nic cable to test those machines and they print fine so I know the problem is isolated to this printer. I just need some ideas of what to look at next. I've pulled the back cover off and looked for loose cables and so forth. These machines are newer than most of the equipment I service so I have no spare parts for them so I can't just start ordering parts randomly just to swap out and see what happens so if anyone has any idea, I would be most appreciative. The machine is out of warranty at this point. Apparently it's never been installed and was sitting on the shelf for the last couple of years and they tried to install it a few weeks ago.