I've encountered something strange with two different clients using HP MFP 4301 printers. Over the weekend, both printers appeared to have been factory reset, losing their address books and email server settings. I initially thought it was a random issue, but having two similar calls in just two days makes me wonder if there's a bigger problem at play. Is anyone else experiencing this recently?
5 Answers
I encountered an issue where I had set a static IP and changed the hostname on my MFP 4301. The next day, I found it was offline and noticed those settings had reset. The team at the office swears nobody touched it. I left it at default but checked again, and both the IP and hostname were back to what I originally set. Definitely the same printer; the hardware ID didn't change.
I've had a similar thing happen with my HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301. Most of my settings were wiped, but the address book contacts remained. It looks like there was a firmware update, as the interface changed significantly. I'm on firmware version 6.28.1.35-202511201716.
I’ve read about it being risky to allow modern HP printers to auto-download firmware updates. There are reports of issues linked to these updates, so it might be worth looking into how your printers are configured.
We've seen a few different HP printers facing this issue, and eventually, many of them completely failed. An HP tech mentioned it could be linked to a bad batch of Toshiba drives used in those models. After switching to WD drives, the problems lessened. We experienced wiped settings, uninstalled solutions, and even had to do firmware reinstalls multiple times. It seems they all shared a similar failure timeline.
I also had this happen just this morning. Everything reset on my HP 4301, like it reverted to factory settings without any manual updates done. It really feels like something remote triggered this, possibly due to firmware changes.
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