Don't buy a Dell Color MFP E525w laser printer

Archaea

Archaea

[H]F Junkie
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PSA:

After 1 hour the printer goes into "deep sleep" and you can't disable deep sleep.

To wake it up you have to power cycle the printer, or wake it up by pushing a button on the front panel.

This happens with both wired and wireless network connection.

I called Dell and confirmed. Dell CSR said it's a product limitation. I asked if this was in the product manual or documentation anywhere, because I couldn't find that and it would have prevented me from buying it. He said they don't publish that information, and it's not documented to his knowledge. He said the printer gets too hot and would damage itself if it didn't go into deep sleep. I said that's ridiculous and hung up. My printer is on the main floor and my office is in the basement. For the last few months I've had to walk upstairs to wake the printer up every time I wanted to use it. I figured this was a configuration issue on my side and waited till I had some time to investigate further. I don't print that much but how dumb is that as a design option?

So I bought this printer because Consumer Reports said it was the best, economical, color laser printer in their 2017 buyers guide.

Shame on both Dell and Consumer Reports.

I tried to leave an amazon review, but Amazon said I couldn't write a review on it. So I'm dropping it here. I also wrote a nasty gram to Consumer Reports.
 
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Pretty shitty of them to sell the printer with these issues.

I would research to see if there is some way to send it a keep alive every 55 minutes (or whatever).
Find a command that you can send to the printer that will reset the sleep timer and write a script to send it.

May have to be something exotic like querying the printer capabilities, memory installed, etc.
You may have to read up on how to talk to the printer in it's language.

See if there are any firmware updates for the printer that may fix the not waking up issue.

See if there is a factory config mode where you may be able to change the sleep settings.

ETA: Start with something simple like just sending a ping to the printer on it's IP.

You may also be able to use a wireless to USB print server box to solve this.
The printer may wake up properly with a USB connection.

.
 
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Do you have to load a proprietary Dell driver? Maybe there's a setting in the "Dell" app that's not in the MS stock driver.
 
dvsman said:
Do you have to load a proprietary Dell driver? Maybe there's a setting in the "Dell" app that's not in the MS stock driver.
Click to expand...
I did load the specific Dell newest drivers. Oddly enough the Dell document hub acts like it sees the printer online, but it will never actually print until I wake it up physically manually.

I think I may have a workaround. I bought a Amazon Echo dot on Black Friday and it came with a WiFi smart plug. I could hook that up to the printer and just use Alexa to power cycle the printer everytime I need it.

I tried pinging the device to wake it up, it doesn’t even show up as online, so you can’t ping it. When I power cycle it then it shows up again online and can be pinged.
 
I saw this in a forum post after trying to find your printer, it seems to work on a bunch of different model #'s;

RE: Dell E310dw Laser Printer will not wake from Deep Sleep... or sleep for that matter.



Jump to solution
I turned off deep sleep because the printer would always disconnect from the network and I would have to reboot the printer to print. Since I have turned off the deep sleep feature, I haven't had any problems.

From the control panel go to General Setup/ Ecology / Sleep Time, when the display reads 1min press the back button and the down button simultaneously. The display should now say deep sleep. now select Off, and exit back out.

That should disable the Deep Sleep Feature. Hopefully this helps, because even tech support thought there was no way to turn off deep sleep, and I was banging my head against the wall every time I had to reboot.
Click to expand...

RE: Dell E310dw Laser Printer will not wake from Deep Sleep... or sleep for that matter.



Jump to solution
BIG thanks to rv16 for instructions on how to turn off deep sleep!

It's fiddly to do but when you get to the Deep Sleep menu, then press ok and then up/down to select off.

Having done this, my wireless connection to my mfp 515w now seems to be working perfectly.
Click to expand...

Might be worth a try.
 
Archaea said:
I did load the specific Dell newest drivers. Oddly enough the Dell document hub acts like it sees the printer online, but it will never actually print until I wake it up physically manually.

I think I may have a workaround. I bought a Amazon Echo dot on Black Friday and it came with a WiFi smart plug. I could hook that up to the printer and just use Alexa to power cycle the printer everytime I need it.

I tried pinging the device to wake it up, it doesn’t even show up as online, so you can’t ping it. When I power cycle it then it shows up again online and can be pinged.
Click to expand...


No.... the idea is to ping the printer while it is still awake to try to keep it from going to sleep.

The printer has a count-down timer that keeps resetting to 60 minutes on any activity.
You want some kind of communication with the printer that will keep resetting that sleep timer BEFORE it goes to sleep.

You would have a script on a machine that's always on sending the pings (or whatever) 24/7 so the printer never sleeps.


.
 
Just as an easy test.....

Create a batch file that just this line in it:

ping 192.168.xxx.xxx (whatever the IP of the printer is)

Call it ping_e525.bat (or whatever you like)

Setup a task in Task Scheduler to run the batch file every 30 minutes.

See if that keeps the printer awake or not.

.
 
yeah ihave an odler dell colore laser printer. sme shit.

Once it goes into deep standby it will not wake up to print and i have to go click on it.
i mean come on i dont think the networks chip in it get it so hard that i can recievd a signal and start the printer.

looksl iek it best just to tally avoid dell printer
 
Traditionally, Dell doesn't make printers. They usually rebrand. I have not found the exact clone of the Dell Color MFP E525w, but I think it may be a samsung printer. A lot of the Dell low end and multi-function printers were samsung's as of 2015, and the mid-high end were rebadged lexmarks.
I would not be surprised if some other samsung multifunction printer had the exact same problem you are experiencing.
 
SvenBent said:
yeah ihave an odler dell colore laser printer. sme shit.

Once it goes into deep standby it will not wake up to print and i have to go click on it.
i mean come on i dont think the networks chip in it get it so hard that i can recievd a signal and start the printer.

looksl iek it best just to tally avoid dell printer
Click to expand...

the issue is the dhcp client in the printer is borked. so after a while the printer will not show up with it's hostname. but if you enable readwrite snmpv2, you can trigger a reset over the network with a simple command:

snmpset -v 1 -c $SNMP_PASSWORD $PRINTER_IP ".1.3.6.1.2.1.43.5.1.1.3.1" i 4
Click to expand...
 
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