10 hours Ago By Matt Jancer
For those of you too young to have grown up with a printer in every home and office, or even to have worked in an office, a printer was a device engineered as a mass social experiment to run over several decades to test how far you could push a frustrated person before they went batshit Looney Tunes over paper jams and Byzantine settings menus.Printer maker extraordinaire HP just found a way to make printers even more aggravating. Reports have been rolling in that their March 4 firmware update (yes, printers get regular software updates) has been disabling their machines.
HP sells more printers worldwide than any other firm, so it should know better. As of 2021 (for which the latest data from Statista is available), just about one in every four printers is an HP. That means there are an awful lot of people using their ink-stained hands to rip out their own hair right now.
HP LaserJet MFP M232-M237 printer – credit: HPaffected printersSo far, it appears the issue is limited to HP LaserJet MFP M232-M237 models that install the version 20250209 firmware update. After installation, the printer will throw an “error code 11” and flash the ink toner lights, and the user won’t be able to print anything.There has been a rash of complaints in the past few days on the HP support forum, reporting that the problem has struck them too.
I could just fill up this whole article by spamming links to reports of this happening, but I’ll spare us both.“We are aware of a firmware issue affecting a limited number of HP LaserJet 200 Series devices and our team is actively working on a solution,” an HP spokesperson told ArsTechnica. “For assistance, affected customers can contact our support team at: https://support.
hp.com.”HP printers aren’t exactly well-liked as it is, with constant complaints over customer service and short lifespans.
Add me to the list of people who got sick of replacing their HP printers every couple of years for stupid breakdowns and finally bought a Brother.If you’re still plodding along with an HP LaserJet MFP M232-M237, don’t update your firmware until HP comes out with the next version and, we hope, fixes the issue.The post HP Accidentally Bricked Its Own Printers appeared first on VICE.
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