Question Brother printer printing 1-2 line gibberish

[BoomerD]

Ever since I got the Brother HL-L2395DW printer connected to my network, it's printing occasional 1-2 line gibberish pages. Some are just a myriad of odd-ball graphics characters, once in a while I'll get something like:
CONNECT example.com:80 HTTP/1.1
HOST: example.com:80
Connection: keep-alive
I've been through the Brother site looking for answers...find nothing.

I have the latest drivers installed, network is run through a Netgear 5 port switch connected to my Netgear cable modem.

I'm REALLY getting tired of wasting paper and toner on this crap.

Edit...kind of like this:

This just happens...no print jobs pending, none in the queue, it just happens.

 

[sdifox]

I was hoping for aliens. how does a grounding issue cause this exactly?

switch could be sending noise down the line. Thing is the Ethernet port on the printer is supposed to reject noise. So maybe Brother cheaped out on the quality of the port.

The Keep Alive thing may be associated with the printer monitoring software, op could try turning off that feature and retry connecting printer through switch.

 

[BoomerD]

I was hoping for aliens. how does a grounding issue cause this exactly?

He...I live in a (semi) nice, almost respectable neighborhood...we ain't got us none of them thar aleeyuns...or....WAIT! are you saying my printer needs a tin foil hat?

 

[mindless1]

I try to be helpful then I realize, you didn't even try the basics like the foil hat. You really need to put that up front, that you chose not to do the obvious.

 

[BoomerD]

I try to be helpful then I realize, you didn't even try the basics like the foil hat. You really need to put that up front, that you chose not to do the obvious.

For some reason, the pic above didn't post. Let me try again.

 

[Thump553]

If the problem comes back I suggest leaving no paper in the printer. Then if one of these phantom print jobs comes up you should be able to just cancel the print job.

 

[Paperdoc]

Poor grounding either of a shield (In the box or in a cable) or of what should be real Ground lines in the box allows some signal lines to receive electromagnetic noise as brief voltage pulses. In a digital circuit if such a voltage pulse exceeds a certain minimum, it is interpreted as a "1", rather than a "0". So a burst of noise pulses picked up that way can become a "valid" digital number that is sent out on a port to a connected device. In your case, that device is a printer, and its response to a blast of digital data packets is to print whatever it says. If the device had been, say, a digital sound card connected to speakers, you would have heard static.

 

[A///]

switch could be sending noise down the line. Thing is the Ethernet port on the printer is supposed to reject noise. So maybe Brother cheaped out on the quality of the port.

The Keep Alive thing may be associated with the printer monitoring software, op could try turning off that feature and retry connecting printer through switch.

that like phone line interference where two lines pick up each others signal?

 

[sdifox]

that like phone line interference where two lines pick up each others signal?

That's crosstalk, a bit different than this.

 

[A///]

That's crosstalk, a bit different than this.

would it be like signal noise ratios being out of bounds on a dsl or coaxial modem?

 

[Torn Mind]

I have a hunch Brother intentionally designs their printers have failure points so that....
1. a select percentage fails.
2. They fail out of warranty
3. They aren't that great in terms of quality prints even when new.

My mom dumpster dived a DCP-L2540DW. Most likely cause of failure? The power supply board....
Scanner/photocopy unit winds up bricked. Printing still available.

I think a different dumpster dive reeled in a white one with a busted fuser.

 

[BoomerD]

Hmmm...I thought I updated this. I removed the Netgear switch, reconnected things through the wifi router's switch. The alien messages have stopped.

 

[RK101]

Just so you know, we have this exact problem on two completely different model/brand printers in the same office. An occasional single line of gibberish, not related to when people are printing.

And the problem followed us to a new office with entirely new network equipment. We thought it might be network related, and since we knew we were moving soon, we didn't work too hard to debug it in the old office. But it's still happening - the poltergeist followed us.

The printers are a Brother desktop and a big floor-standing Canon office printer. Both randomly print blank pages with one line of gibberish across the top (just as pictured in the OP). This happened on our all-Juniper network in the old office and now happens on our new network with no Juniper gear.

We have not found a cause or solution.

 

[BoomerD]

Just so you know, we have this exact problem on two completely different model/brand printers in the same office. An occasional single line of gibberish, not related to when people are printing.

And the problem followed us to a new office with entirely new network equipment. We thought it might be network related, and since we knew we were moving soon, we didn't work too hard to debug it in the old office. But it's still happening - the poltergeist followed us.

The printers are a Brother desktop and a big floor-standing Canon office printer. Both randomly print blank pages with one line of gibberish across the top (just as pictured in the OP). This happened on our all-Juniper network in the old office and now happens on our new network with no Juniper gear.

We have not found a cause or solution.

Well ..I'm glad to hear it wasn't just me infested with gremlins.
In my case, it almost always happened at night, and it might skip a day or two...then print off 20 sheets with one or two lines of gibberish.
Since I took the Netgear switch out of the network, the gremlins have moved on.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I was hoping for aliens. how does a grounding issue cause this exactly?

Fundamentally, the printer is getting traffic, not sure what to do with it, and so it prints it out.

Anything that can corrupt network traffic can result in random packets that are either lost, misdirected, or non-parsable.

It's a theory. Personally, I've seen some pretty weird stuff in networking, and bad layer 1/2 stuff (cranky wiring, bad switches) can cause all sorts of weird phantom issues in a data center.