HP Wireless Printing & Scanning

[LukySwiss]

I've installed Portmaster and find it a very useful tool.

I just found that I can't use HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 Scanner anymore which is connected via WiFi.
Update: Also the Windows test page isn't received by the Printer.
The tray icon already reported that the Scanner is no longer connected... and as soon as I shut down Portmaster it reconnects again.
When manually starting the Scanning App it brings an error message "Scanner communication cannot be established".

In the Apps List I only see the app HPNetworkCommunicatorCom which is the *.exe file with the same name from HP bin folder.

Here is what I found
1.) the HP app frequently sends LAN Multicast Outgoing to 239.255.255.0: (I have tried to copy it from Portmaster, but it didn't allow or I made a failure and not it's gone).
2.) that LAN peer-to-peer Incoming got blocked from Portmaster

So, I manually edited Portmaster settings for that app
Unchecked Force Block Incoming Connections. --> But this didn't resolve the problem.

Now it doesn't show me any blocked traffic for that App, so I don't know what elese I can do.

The App that starts the scanner is HP Scanner.exe in same HP bin folder. But I do not see this App in Portmaster.

My suspicion is

• there is a Windows Service that is blocking the peer-to-peer communication with the printer / scanner.
  These seems actually the case because
• Windows Service: SSDPSRV is showing blocked connections:
• LAN Peer-to-Peer Incoming:
  192.168.112.1:58520,
  192.168.56.1:58518,
  192.168.8.117:58517, (seems the be from the correct subnet)
  192.168.211.1:58519
  and earlier
  192.168.211.1:63751,
  192.168.8.117:63749, (seems the be from the correct subnet)
  192.168.112.1:63752,
  192.168.56.1:63750

The printer/scanner IP address is 192.168.8.102
The Win7 test machine IP address is 192.168.8.117

Question:
What would be the correct settings?
Do I really need to completely unlock that Windows service?

Thank you.

[github-actions]

Greetings and welcome to our community! As this is the first issue you opened here, we wanted to share some useful infos with you:

• 🗣️ Our community on Discord is super helpful and active. We also have an AI-enabled support bot that knows Portmaster well and can give you immediate help.
• 📖 The Wiki answers all common questions and has many important details. If you can't find an answer there, let us know, so we can add anything that's missing.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as inactive because it has not had activity in the past two months.

If no further activity occurs, this issue will be automatically closed in one week in order to increase our focus on active topics.

[LukySwiss]

After the above message, I thought I provide at least a short message about the status of the problem.

Even after support on Discord's Saving community support, the actual specific problem is not resolved.
(Thank you for your extensive help, also on other questions I had!)
But as I now can print and scan while using PM... I didn't take the effort to further check on the real problem and potentially solving the root cause.

The workaround for me with the printer itself was and still is to have PM allow traffic marked as Network Noise for that specific LAN IP-Address of the HP8620 and giving the device a permanent IP address (in my case on the device itself).
For the scanner (on the same device) additionally I need to sometimes run "HP print and scan doctor" (which in the latest version (I think it was 7.4) did allow to specifically check for scanner related problems). The only bummer here is, that for fixing the connection issue, this app is asking for the device's web-gui login details :/ (but ok, at least with PM I can deny any HP related traffic to be sent online and their app also accepted that;)

I've been thinking what would be great to actually better understand the underlying problem:

• It would be great if PM could analyze / report, in more detail, what kind of traffic is received when marking it as "Network Noise".

As I it looks like I have found these workarrounds...
I have no problem if you like to close the issue.
Still of course I'd be happy to find the real cause of the problem why that traffic is marked as "Noise".

[firxworx]

I am on a wifi network with an HP ENVY wifi printer, thankfully on a trusted network. The printer was not visible and I will share what settings I temporarily disabled to find and add the printer in Windows just so I could print something in case it helps someone in a jam.

Allow incoming connections by disabling:

• force block incoming connections

Plus I disabled the filter lists just in case they were playing a role:

• ads & trackers
• malware
• deception

(I figure its unlikely these were a factor however I just needed to print something quick and wanted to make sure it would work)

Plus under the EXPERIMENTS section I disabled:

• wsp (windows spy blocker)

(I figure this could be a culprit based on the name, but that's a guess, I have no other knowledge of what this is actually blocking)

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as inactive because it has not had activity in the past two months.

If no further activity occurs, this issue will be automatically closed in one week in order to increase our focus on active topics.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically closed because it has not had recent activity. Thank you for your contributions.

If the issue has not been resolved, you can find more information in our Wiki or continue the conversation on our Discord.