PLEASE someone read & try to help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Will Sheppard
  • Start date Start date
W

Will Sheppard

Hey there,

I have a network hooked up between two computers in my
house, and a laser printer is hooked up to mine. Every
time I turn on my printer, the LAN connection drops off
and it says "A Network Cable is Unplugged". This goes on
until the printer warms up, then it goes away. But I
just com back into the room after the printer's been on
for a few minutes, the message is back up again.

When I turn off the printer, it goes away. I'm using XP
Professional.

Does anyone know what is causing this, and how I can fix
it???

Thanks!

Will
 
Sounds to me like a power supply issue of some sort.

What are you using for network connections? e.g. a hub/router, is the NIC
in your computer a USB NIC?
Is the printer connected via USB, parallel port or something else?

Does it make any difference if you plug the printer power cable into a
diffirent circuit in your house power wiring?
 
The router (Linksys BEFSX41) is attached via network
patch cord. The printer is an HP Laserjet 4 Plus,
connected to my PC via parallel port. And no, it does
not matter if I plug the printer into another circuit.

That's the strange part, it used to work fine but
suddenly stopped working correctly. Should I just redo
my entire network???

Thanks,
Will
 
This is somewhat speculative, but may help. It's an elaboration on the
theme of a power supply issue.

Through some of the pins on the parallel connector on the PC, electrical
power (e.g. 5.5 volts and a few milliamps) is provided to the connected
device. Signalling is accomplished by selectively applying power or
grounding the pins according to a specification (e.g. IEEE 1284 - for
example see http://www.fapo.com/1284elec.htm).

Perhaps:
a. the printer is drawing an excessive amount of power from one or more of
these pins
or
b. the power supply inside the PC is starting to fail
or
c. the network adapter is starting to fail (or is marginal to start with)
or
d. the power supply in the PC is just not capable of supplying enough power
to the installed components (e.g. additional adapter cards, hard drives,
CD/DVD drives etc.)

The net result may be that the voltage level in some part of the network
adapter is dropping below some threshold and this is interpreted as there
not being any cable connected any more.

You might want to have the printer, or the power supply in the PC checked to
see if there is an insipiate failure happening.

A similar defect in the router or any other connected device might have this
affect, as might a defect in one of the cables.

Even though the power supply has not failed completely, a defective one can
cause variuos strange affects, including for example, what appear to be
intermittent hard drive failures.
 
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