Error When Printing: 49.4A.04 -- HP Color Laserjet Enterprise CP5525xh

Soultion

In my situation, installing the latest firmware fixed the problem, 2304061_439461 at time of writing. Various threads on HP's support site suggest the issue is a "rogue" print job; in less dumb terms, it's a print job the printer doesn't know how to handle. Updating the firmware have given the printer the ability to understand the jobs that were causing the problem.

There are several ways to go about doing a firmware upgrade. They can be done remotely via the web interface, or locally with a usb drive. If you're mad and have your printer internet connected, you can also tell it to download the update itself. Do make sure to read the "Read Me" for the update, however, because they sometimes do specify that the update cannot be applied with a given method because of errors. No idea why this is, you'd think the update process would be pretty much the same regardless of method of application, but you'll probably save yourself a headache or two if you double check before hand.

Either way, follow the instructions in the user/service guide.

CP5525 User Guide
CP5525 Service Manual

You can easily find these for other models by Googling "$model user guide" or "$model service manual" -- User guides will generally be on HP's site, service manuals are generally not. I like manualslib.com.

Important Note: I ran into another problem after firmware upgrade. I'm not sure the problem was because of the firmware upgrade, but be aware of it as a possibility. You can read about the additional problem and how I fixed it here.

Problem & Full Story

We've had numerous problems with our CP5525xh printer. It's only used by three or four people, but, at least recently, has been about 80% of our printer complaints. I can't blame all the issues on the printer itself, there's a fair bit of user error, but the thing is unreasonably unstable in general.

On recurring issue has been the printer crashing when we have the gall to try to make it print something. When this happens we get the 49.4A.04 error, and the printer must be rebooted to restore service. This will fix the printer, until the problem document is printed again.

The error is document specific, certain documents print fine, others cause the error. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which documents it accepts or doesn't; other than that problem documents are often more complex documents (files printed from photoshop, lightroom, and some more complex .pdf files). Also interesting to note that documents that once print fine can have minor edits done, then stop working. The preeminent case was the adding of a text box to a poster one user was working on in photoshop causing the document to stop printing.

Worth noting also that this is strictly a printer issue. The job is spooled and sent through the print server without error. Same error also occurs when printing directly, rather than through a print server.

Some things we tried that didn't work

• Selecting "First Boot" from preboot menu
• Selecting "Cold Boot" from preboot menu
• Direct mapping printer, rather than using print server
• Rebooting User's machine / restarting offending program
• Reinstall / Update drivers on User's Machine
• Reinstall / Update drivers on Print Server

 Another option is to have the user export the document (to a more widely accepted format) before printing. This seems to work in most cases, but was met with much hostility as a work around (additional steps / time in workflow).

What finally fixed it for us was to install the latest firmware for the printer -- see "Solution" section at the top.