Unable to disable sleep mode on VersaLink C405 and staff having numerous issues

[wpw3]

I have had the same issue.  It astounds me that the software team could not create a product that would work in a simple work environment.... or that the solutions are draconian.  You chastise Xerox for being tone deaf, but Xerox is simply in the cycle, and victim of, creative destruction.  They were once a vaunted company with superior products, and now in order to compete they "stack 'em high and let 'em fly" to the clear detriment of product quality and user experience.  It is infuriating BUT, the market -- particularly the concumer market and the small business market will not tolerate it forever.  Purchasing the Xerox VersaLink 405 was an inexpensive lesson in the consequence of corporate complacency.

[PhilH]

After an hour long conversation with the Xerox support web team last week, they decided the best thing was to send an engineer out. The engineer got here this morning and sure enough, found a known issue in the engineer support documents about this model not waking properly from sleep. The fix is to enter diagnostic mode and change an NVM value to disable deep sleep, as Gabiene said so the engineer tried to do this. Unfortunately, this is now a protected field and cannot be changed.

The engineer spoke to a colleague who has a lot of experience with these machines and he said that they've changed that field to write protected because of Energy Saver stuff and in his experience some machines have this wake on sleep issue, some do not. Xerox HQ require engineers to replace two pieces of hardware in the machine as the recommended step although in this other engineer's experience, that almost never works and the whole machine has to be replaced but it's a hoop HQ basically make them jump through.

The engineer's now ordered the parts and will be back in a couple of days to fit them. We'll then have to see if that makes a difference (expected not to) and then we'll likely need to get the machine replaced and hope the new machine doesn't have the same unfixable bug.

This whole thing has made Xerox look completely incompetent imo. Some people at Xerox seem to have decided they needed to push this Energy Saver stuff in order to look more 'green' but the bugs in the software weren't ironed out and fixed before that was forced through. This bug has been driving our office staff mad as it's infuriating, being unable to print when you need to. I can't see myself ever recommending Xerox to anyone else and I'm now unlikely to buy a new Xerox machine personally or for our company ever again. Not only will this issue have cost them who knows how much in parts, support engineer time, shipping and maybe even a whole new printer, it will also damage future sales.

[GabiE-Xerox]

Unfortunately not, because that involve to enter in Diagnostic Mode with a service engineer password.

[PhilH]

That's interesting Gabi,

Do I have to call Xerox up for that? In order to get a tech to disabel the Deep Sleep or is it something I can somehow get access too. 

[GabiE-Xerox]

Hi,

There is no way to disable power save as Joe said, but you can have a tech to disable Deep Sleep. He can modify an NVM value in Diagnostic Mode to do that.

Gabi

[PhilH]

Unfortunately, that option is already on. I checked the firmware version and while it doesn't have the one you linked, it does say it is up to date and I checked the patch notes for the version I have and it corresponds to the one where they added that feature.

We might end up having to replace this machine and not buy a Xerox again. It's insane that there's no way to stop it going to sleep - no engineer's login or something to change the settings.

[Joe Arseneau]

Xerox would/could lose Energy star rating if it was able to be disabled, so it can't be.

Having said that, a firmware update to this level and enabling the USB port during sleep mode should stop the issue

EWS > System > Power Saver

[PhilH]

We decided to give Xerox a try when we got a printer for our new office but so far it's been an absolute nightmare. I think the main problem with it is that it keeps trying to go to sleep. We don't have many in our office so it's not used for several hours at a time but then it's not waking up properly. Jobs keep getting 'stuck' according to the staff. For some people it can't print because it keeps defaulting to 'recycled' paper, which it doesn't have. I *think* I may have found a way to override this but it's not been working long enough to test.

How can I disable sleep mode entirely? I don't want it *ever* sleeping, not a short sleep, not a long sleep overnight. The options only seem to be able to set a maximum sleep timer of 60 minutes but I want it to be infinite.