HP LaserJet P2055dn Not Printing, Windows Update Failures, Firmware Issues, and Network Problems

HP LaserJet P2055dn Not Printing, Windows Update Failures, Firmware Issues, and Network Problems

The HP LaserJet P2055dn tends to fail in a few very specific ways. Some problems start after a Windows update, where the printer had already been working and then suddenly stopped accepting the same driver path. Others show up as network failures, queue states that do not recover after paper runs out, or firmware behavior that changes how the printer handles copies and print jobs. 

What makes the P2055dn difficult to troubleshoot is that the hardware often remains partly usable while one important path breaks. A printer can still work over USB after its network interface effectively drops out. It can still print one copy even after a firmware change breaks larger copy jobs. It can still appear physically healthy while toner, drum, or fuser wear starts to affect print quality. The examples below focus on how those situations actually played out.

Problem: Printer stopped working after a Windows 10 update

What users observed: The P2055dn had been working from a Windows 10 laptop over USB with a downloaded driver, then stopped working immediately after Windows updated. Multiple driver packages were tried after that, including files from HP’s site and other download sources, but none of them restored printing.

What was tried: Users reinstalled different drivers repeatedly and assumed the failure was entirely driver-related. That did not help because the printer had already been reset back to factory settings, which changed the printer state in a way the normal driver reinstall did not fix.

What this turned out to be: The missing piece was firmware, not another print driver package. The firmware update needed for the P2055dn was found only under the Windows 7 section rather than the Windows 10 area, and the printer was eventually recovered by flashing the firmware from an older Windows 7 machine after extracting and adjusting the updater files.

How this played out: Once the firmware was updated, the P2055dn started printing from Windows 10 again. In the same case, a second printer was accidentally bricked during a direct .rfu flashing attempt and ended up with a fatal error and P0605 state, which shows how much of this issue depended on the firmware path rather than on the driver alone.

Problem: Printer worked before Windows 11, then would no longer install correctly

What users observed: The printer had worked before the move to Windows 11, but later stopped installing properly. Reinstalling the drivers under different settings did not help, and Windows began reporting that a driver for the printer was not available.

What was tried: Users downloaded the available HP files again and reran installation, including the same packages that had worked in the past. That did not bring the printer back.

How this played out: The more reliable direction was to stop relying on automatic install behavior and rebuild the printer manually. In the reported setup, the working path centered on adding the printer step by step and using the HP Universal Print Driver path instead of waiting for Windows to rediscover the printer cleanly on its own. Where the printer was network-connected, the manual TCP/IP port path mattered more than letting Windows create a WSD-style path automatically.

Problem: Multiple-copy jobs broke after firmware update and stopped at 20 copies

What users observed: After updating the printer from older firmware to the 20141201 release, the printer would begin a multi-copy job normally, then stop after 20 copies no matter how many copies had been requested. In one case, asking for hundreds of copies always ended at 20. After that, the printer could fall into an even stranger state where every future multi-copy request printed only one copy.

What was tried: Different drivers were tested, but only one older Windows-supplied P2050 Series PCL 6 driver still used the printer’s own multi-copy handling. Other drivers forced the computer to send the same page repeatedly as separate jobs, which was not practical for large runs.

How this played out: The issue stayed tied to the newer firmware and did not have a clean rollback path. In more stressed cases, the printer could freeze completely during queued multi-copy jobs or throw a 49 error when multi-page copy jobs were sent. This was not treated as a simple driver mismatch. The firmware change itself had altered the printer’s job-handling behavior.

Problem: Printing did not recover after the printer ran out of paper

What users observed: When the P2055dn ran out of paper during a job, client computers did not reset themselves properly afterward. Even after paper was loaded again or the printer was restarted, the client still behaved as though the printer had not recovered.

What was tried: The only reliable short-term fixes were all on the client side: running the Windows troubleshooter, restarting the computer, or restarting the Print Spooler service. That became a repeated support problem because users had to touch the client machine every time the printer hit an out-of-paper state.

How this played out: The issue was treated as a print-path problem rather than a hardware one. The more stable direction was to review the port and driver path, especially where the printer had been left on the wrong port type. Once the print path was corrected, the printer was less likely to stay stuck after paper interruptions.

Problem: Printer disappeared from the network even though it still showed a DHCP address

What users observed: The printer stopped responding on the network entirely. It would not answer pings, could not be reached in a browser, and did not respond through telnet. At the same time, the printer’s own network status report still showed that it was receiving an IP address from DHCP.

What was tried: Users power-cycled the printer, performed a factory reset, renewed the DHCP lease, changed cables, switched network ports, and even set a static IP directly on the printer. None of those brought the network path back.

What this turned out to be: The failure pointed away from cabling and toward the printer’s own network interface. That suspicion became stronger once the printer was connected over USB and worked normally there.

How this played out: The printer remained usable only by connecting it through USB and sharing it back out to the network from a computer. In practice, that meant the print engine was still fine, but the network card path had effectively failed.

Problem: USB connection on macOS did not make the printer appear at all

What users observed: A MacBook running Mojave did not recognize the USB-connected P2055dn at all. The firmware utility could not even be used because the printer first needed to be recognized before the utility would continue. Installing the large HP printer package still left the printer missing from the Add Printer menu.

What was tried: Users installed the large macOS printer package, tried manual add steps, and looked at whether a generic PCL path could be used. The problem was not that the USB cable was obviously dead. The printer still simply did not appear the way a user expected.

How this played out: The case never turned into a clean plug-and-play Mac setup. The realistic direction was either a manual add path with a generic print language, network-based addition instead of depending on USB detection, or abandoning the idea of direct support on that macOS version. The important detail is that the printer was not recovered by ordinary auto-recognition on Mojave.

Problem: Very small text printed weakly or looked much worse than expected

What users observed: A second-hand P2055dn produced weak, hard-to-read output on very small text, especially around 5-point text sizes. The owner compared it unfavorably to an inkjet printer because the letters came out too faint to trust.

What was tried: The first suspicion shifted toward maintenance condition rather than setup. Users questioned the toner, drum condition, and print resolution, especially because the included cartridge was likely a third-party toner and the printer had already seen years of use.

How this played out: The likely failure path centered on the toner or the drum section within the cartridge. In similar cases, replacing the cartridge and running a cleaning process was treated as the first real corrective step. The printer itself was not being judged as a laser platform failure so much as a worn-consumable case on an older machine.

Problem: Extra marks appeared on the page

What users observed: The printer began leaving unwanted marks on paper rather than producing clean output. This was not described as faint text or poor contrast, but as visible extra marks appearing on the printed page itself.

What was tried: Users considered the toner cartridge first, since that is often the simplest source of repeated page marks. The same symptom was also compared against known fuser-related defects.

How this played out: Once the toner possibility was ruled out, the problem pointed toward the fuser path. In this case, the printer was still functioning, but the print path itself had developed a repeating mechanical defect rather than a software problem.

Problem: The printer developed a low rubbing noise that kept getting louder

What users observed: One P2055dn began making a low rubbing sound that slowly got louder over time. It did not sound like the common grinding noise seen in other printer repair videos, and the external gears all appeared to be moving normally.

What was tried: Users removed the right-side cover to inspect the moving gear path and replaced the drum/toner cartridge, but the noise remained unchanged.

How this played out: The sound was ultimately treated as normal for this model unless it began affecting print quality or print function. The specific component named in the discussion was the swing gear assembly, which can produce this kind of sound even when the printer is otherwise working. That means the presence of the noise alone did not confirm an active failure.

Problem: Firmware files were hard to find even when the printer clearly needed them

What users observed: Users trying to update the P2055dn firmware found that the normal printer support page mainly exposed drivers, while the firmware file was either hidden, listed under older operating systems, or difficult to locate through the usual product page flow.

What was tried: People searched HP’s support pages, followed old references, and eventually located the firmware file through older support links or archived product-specific download paths.

How this played out: In actual use, the firmware file remained important not only for direct recovery but also for weird printer states where the last page of a job would not print until another job was sent. In those cases, rerunning the same firmware update again was treated as a way to clear the printer’s internal state even when the firmware version itself was not changing.