HP Original Cartridges
Reliable Remanufactured Cartridges
One of the merits of the P4014 against a new printer is the low cost of good re-manufactured cartridges.
At the moment we don't sell in the US, but we hope to soon
Error Message 68 for HP P4014, P4015 and P4515 Series Printers.
68.X PERMANENT STORAGE ERROR
68 Error essentially means the hard disk, NVRAM or flash pen has a problem.
The "X" part of the code identifies the device in other printers. The service manual for the P4014 series doesn't say what it means for this specific machine but normally 0=onboard NVRAM, 1=removable disk. Since the P4014 has three USB slots and an EIO there may be other sub-codes.
If there are several flash pens installed in the printer it might prove wise to remove them one at a time then replace them, noting which gives the error. Remove any that don't have a problem before re-initialising any.
Older printers used the same message to indicate a full NVRAM , the normal cure with older printers was to:
- Print the configuration page so that settings can be re-entered.
- Hold down
Cancel Job
whilst turning the power on to clear the NVRAM (temporarily removing the network card would prevent the NVRAM clear also resetting its network parameters - that isn't possible with the P4014 etc). - Re-enter anything that changed from the configuration page.
68.0 PERMANENT STORAGE ERROR
could be bad news because "one or more printer settings has been reset to its factory default." so there could be a hunt to decide which setting changed. (There is a problem that printers don't make an electronic copy of their settings unless you record what is seen through the web interface.
Messages in the same group are 68.X PERMANENT STORAGE error
- can be PERMANENT STORAGE FULL
, PERMANENT STORAGE WRITE FAIL
, STORAGE ERROR SETTINGS CHANGED
The HP service manual for the P4014 series says: ...
The permanent storage is full. Some settings might have been reset to the factory defaults.
If the error does not clear, turn the product off and then on.
Print a configuration page and check the product settings to determine which values have changed.The storage device is failing to write. Printing can continue, but there might be some unexpected behaviours because an error occurred in permanent storage.
Press OK to continue.
If the error does not clear, turn the product off then on. If the message persists, contact an HP-authorized service or support provider.
Printer Memory
Printers can use a surprising amount of memory and it is not unusual for large, fast machines to be fitted with a hard disk. The memory is used to store jobs that have yet to be printed, but also to do things like storing jobs until a specific user is present (the P4015 and P4515 have numeric keypads to make this easier. There obviously is a problem if users send jobs but then go on holiday and don't retrieve them. A mere 20GB hard disk will hold an enormous amount of print but it does depend on what it holds: text is small, a pre-rasterised version of what will print is huge.
Fonts and that are printed regularly can also be held in the printer, rather than in a server. (For instance, it may allow the office to fall-back to paperwork if the system is down). Another possibility is to hold the rasterised version of pages so that a 50 copies of a 50 page report with heavy graphics is not delayed by re-rasterising the pages for each copy.
Diagnostics
The messages given by the printer are pretty self explanatory.
Remedies
The usual "fix" for PERMANENT STORAGE FULL
is to use HP Web Jetadmin software to get a filemanager view and then delete files that aren't needed any more.
68.X PERMANENT STORAGE WRITE FAIL
might suggest first trying turning the power off and re-seating the EIO connectors. If that doesn't work it may be necessary to re-initialise the disk and if that fails it will need replacing.
Web Research
Google might obviously respond differently depending on the specific message used for search. I tried querying Google with P4015 "68.X PERMANENT STORAGE ERROR"
in quotes and got a suggestion of About 266 results
; a minor topic.
- advancedlaser Quite a nice looking page with "Error 68" for most of the older printers. Needs updating to cover printers after the 4200 series.
- printertechs page on error 60 and up. A bit dated on error 68 perhaps?
- laserprinterhelp's attempt to create a forum seeded with bits of the manual - but yet again this page has attracted no comment.
- hp.com page for "LaserJet 4200 and 4300 Series Printers - Numerical Error Messages" - a bit off target as the question was for a LJ-P4015 but they do share this message. The problem is this page doesn't really help - no subcodes.
- mpitech.com "bluekit" IPDS emulation for HP printers in PDF form. Since the emulation plugs in it can lead to error 68.
- MPI-tech User Guide for the IPDS emulation.
- parksidetechnology basically just an ad/blog for a technician in the US. Happens to mention error 68. ...
- printer-repair.money-maker.co.uk/ blog with a technicians note on error 68 on an LJ-4100. Not really relevant but possibly useful.
Although there were about 20 further search responses non of them seemed very relevant and most have been noted before so I haven't listed them.
Copyright G & J Huskinson & MindMachine Associates Ltd 2013, 2015. Some pictures derived from HP User and Service guides. These technical pages do not constitute an offer for sale; just our knowledge at the time of writing. See the catalogue. Sales pages on this Web site use cookies to store user information. We also use Google Analytics to track site usage patterns.