I’ve been a fan of HP printers since the mid 90’s when I was given a LaserJet IIIp. It was a workhorse and in the 12 or so years that I owned it, the only maintenance I performed was the replacement of a fuser bulb. The Laserjet 4 series was just as reliable and many of this series are still in use.
Jump forward almost ten years to the Laserjet P3005 series. I’ve installed a dozen or so of this model in the past year and have started to encounter one of three symptoms on roughly a third of them. If you have had problems with them, see if these symptoms look familiar:
- blank (but lit) display panels
- memory errors
- sudden loss of network configuration
These are resolved by replacing the formatter board. Recently, however, I’ve started having problems with even the replacement formatter board. One was replaced last week, and this week started losing the network configuration multiple times through the day.
What are your experiences with the later model HP printers. How do you think they compare to the older models? Let me know your thoughts.
Rog, when you say ” I buy them used rebake the boards and they work “, do you say that you put the board into your kitchen’s oven? If yes, what temperature and how much time? Else, what do you mean by “rebake”?
Unfortunately about 2 years ago we replaced 72 of our 2200 and 2100 printers for P3005. I would we have replaced ruffly 30-40 formatter boards already if you include some were replaced multiple times. The P3005 series are just plain junk, I tried writing a review on HP’s site about a year ago and they didn’t even post it, it was nothing bad just the truth. I sure wish we would have kept our 2200’s they only thing that went with them was the rollers and a jet direct card once in a while.
We have about 40 of these and one by one they are failing. We bothered to fix a few ourselves to start with but after about 4 failures I called HP. This is a known issue to them and they will actually replace models of certain serial numbers even if they are out of warranty.
The ones we have are just over 2 years old
Unfortunately 1 of the failures is not in the agreed serial range, but another 1 is, so give them a call 08451610030 option 2
That whole P series was a problem I have seen the same things happening on all my p series Hp printers. They were manufactured in China and the solder on these formatters are no good. I buy them used rebake the boards and they work perfect .The Laser Jet 4050 is my personal favorite if you just need a printer nothing high speed. Believe it or not I still have about 100 of these units in service. We were going to upgrade them to the p3005 But they are having manufacturing problems. Whats even funnier is that those older hp printers you mentioned were manufactured in america. So go figure
I hear your pain. I’m a technician with over forty years in the biz. Working for a County of Los Angeles Agency, we have had almost all of our P3005’s come down with formater board failure. Other new models of HP printers seem to be doing the same thing. The last good HP office use printer was the Laserjet 5N. After that they got worse and worse.