Pixma mp495 WiFi interruption

[Tudor]

Hello,

I've just spent a day trying to get my canon mp495 wireless printing to work and failed due to something very strange.

I've figured out what the "wireless cable" is, figured out precisely at which point I have to insert it for the printer to get discovered, and figured out that I need to say No when it gets discovered so that I can also manually insert the wifi WPA key I'm using in my house.
So I've installed it correctly.

However...

Here's what happens every time I wirelessly print a page:
- the classic Canon preview window pops up and it takes a couple of seconds (for the laptop to talk to the printer I guess) before I can see the actual preview. (in wired mode, on my PC, it doesn't take those 2-3 seconds; but maybe it's the PC being faster than the laptop...)
- I confirm, and the ink levels dialog pops up and it's progress bar starts moving.
- The printer starts working, takes the page, prints half an inch of the document, then it instantly gets stuck.
*why it gets stuck you ask?*
- My laptop's WiFi connection goes to Disconnected, that's why. Windows 7 tries to auto reconnect, "Connecting...", and it fails. I manually connect, it says "Windows was unable to connect to ...".
- Printer spits out the sheet of paper.
- Ink levels / progress window stays open and progress is stuck at 30%.
- While this window is active and the document "printing", windows cannot reconnect to WiFi to save it's life.

So the printer or the software is somehow preventing my laptop from keeping it's WiFi connection. And it can't reconnect until I "cancel all documents".

What in ze hell is going on?

Oh, by the way, I tried the same thing a few months back, while my laptop was running Windows XP, and the same thing happened.

Thanks a million for any help!

PS: Could it be some problem / incompatibility / port issue with the Router? The router never goes down, just my laptop's connection to it. (it's a D-Link DI-524)

 

[Tudor]

Oh for the love of noodles! The software wizard from the CD was old and inflexible. I downloaded a new version from Canon, which also included "Canon IJ Network Tool".

This tool actually looks for the printer, finds it, and has TCP/IP setup where I could set a static IP. Finally. So many google search queries and I've never found mention of this. Canon support seems non-existent.

So now it works as it should.

My guess is that the IP was set as "get IP address automaticaly", and because of this there was an IP check in mid print (maybe the information is being sent in chunks to the printer, as my printing was interrupting earlier for large images and later for text; so maybe there's a buffer thing going on) which was somehow messing up everything, including my laptop's connection...

Cheers!