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Fixing HP C4795 “looking for wireless” issue

When attempting to setup my HPC4795 all-in-one wireless printer, the wireless setup process was hanging on the “looking for wireless” step. It would just sit there, the icon cycling, and never timeout or succeed (this was on a Mac).

I ran the printer diagnostics and everything looked OK except for a FAIL on the Network Name (SSID) Found step. I had the name specified exactly as it is when I connect to it with my Mac and PC. I then printed the HP Network Configuration page and saw that there were 2 linksys SSIDs listed.

So I logged into my linksys WRT54G wireless router (http://192.168.1.1, username: admin, password: admin) and changed the name to a unique one (Natron of course!), refreshed the network setup page and voila, everything worked!

So moral of the story is this: the HPC4795 printers will not connect to the wireless network successfully if there are two access points with the same name, even though my Mac and PC have no problem with this setup. An error message on HP setup would be most helpful - “The printer could not connect to the access point in 30 seconds. Are there two access points with the same name on your network?”

Hope this helps.

© 2009 Nathan Verrill.