# Solved: Networking a Lexmark E120N Printer



## Nemo2000 (Jul 5, 2006)

Not sure if this is really a network or hardware problem, so apologies if the wrong forum!

I have bought a Lexmark E120N printer and attached it to my home network. My network is on 192.168.1 and DHCP is OFF on the router as I use static addresses. The printer found itself (goodness knows from where) an IP address 169.254.1.5 .

The Lexmark set up tries to 'discover' the printer, but can not - whether by using the MAC address or the 169 address makes no difference - therefore I am unable to use the Lexmark utility to change the IP address. Putting the 169 address in my browser only gets me a page off the Internet, NOT the printer :-(

The Lexmark documentation is poor on this subject. Their online knowledge base has an item which _suggests_ that in such cases you need to reset the VRAM (what is that?), but to do that you have to get advice from their Technical Support, who only seem to work normal business hours - which is not when I'm actually at home with the printer! :-(

Does anyone have any ideas please as to what may have caused this problem and how to solve it? I have a theory that, if I can reset the printer IP to 0.0.0.0, turn my router DHCP ON, and then reconnect the printer it might then find an address that I can access. Is that likely, assuming I can reset the printer? Incidentally, using the 'set factory defaults' options does NOT change the network settings :-(

The printer works find on USB, but that's not what I want it for and the USB connection does not give you access to LAN setup menus.

Can anyone help a frustrated user please?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

The printer found that address because you have DHCP turned off on the network, and it needs it to be assigned a proper DHCP address. Turn DHCP back on for the network, and you'll probably have more success. If you want static IP addresses for the rest of the network, you can just make sure they're outside the range of the DHCP address pool of the router.

From the looks of the user's manual for this printer, there may not be a method of assigning a static IP address, which I find a bit odd. However, the previous configuration should work.


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## Nemo2000 (Jul 5, 2006)

John - thanks for that.

Since my original post I have managed some progress! I learnt from surfing elsewhere how to reset the printer IP address to 0.0.0.0, then turned on DHCP on my router with a single address only (the one I wanted for the printer) and when I turned the printer back on it got that address. I can now print over the network :up:

However.....if I use the web interface to the printer to run off its search for a DHCP address and then turn off DHCP on router, next time I power up the printer it reverst to the 169 address  So trying to work out how to make it keep a static address is still an issue, but I'll wait for Lexmark to come back to me on that. the main thing is that I can print, so I'm happy to make this thread as closed :up:

Just for info in case......to reset the printer IP info do the following:-

turn printer off,
open printer cover,
press and KEEP DOWN both control buttons,
power on printer,
continue to press down both buttons until printer finishes its diagnostics and comes up with an error light,
release buttons,
close lid

IP should now be back to 0.0.0.0


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Thanks for the feedback. I think you might consider making your DHCP pool slightly larger than one address, it won't hurt anything, and sometimes will solve issues like this.


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