HP Printer Admin Locked (Solved)
My innate hatred of printers is a fairly well-known thing. So HP Printer Admin Locked [Solved] is a heading that brings me much satisfaction. HP like to keep their device unlocking mechanisms to themselves, no-one has yet managed to decrypt & recreate smc.bin files for example.
Even though I dislike/distrust printers, occasionally I need one. Usually for scanning. So I went against my natural instincts & purchased an HP Officejet Pro 6960, one of these things:
This is a well-specced 3-in-1 device, WiFi, Web Services yada yada yada. All the things.
I decided I needed a printer, walked into the local retailer, quickly found the biggest discount on a printer & bought it – all in maybe 5 minutes. It took longer to get served than to choose the device. I just wanted a machine that would do what it’s told, when it’s told.
Now I’m not the only one who uses my printer. Annoyingly, another user refuses to take my advice of “when you have an IT problem, call me” instead, he prefers to fuck around pushing buttons. The nett effect of this policy was this:
Yep, Admin Locked. Just about every useful setting was now untouchable. FFS.
Of course the above image came with denials too. “I didn’t do that! All I did was…” IT peeps have heard that one before, that’s the “I didn’t do it” story. Anyway, the locking didn’t really affect anything, seeing as the printer was already set up, accessible on the network & doing what printers are supposed to do. So I kinda forgot about the Admin Lock. Until I moved the printer to another network, when the Admin Lock reared its ugly head again.
Of course I wasn’t going to accept that the lock was a permanent thing, hell no! It was time to research. First up, the User manual. Nope, nothing in there, what a waste of time reading that was. Next step – Hewlett Packard are a massive company with a comprehensive range of product, it follows that they’d also have a huge online support presence. Their consumer product support forums are a fountain of knowledge – if you know how to look.
As mentioned above, HP have a policy of keeping their unlock mechanisms to themselves *sigh*. So I wasn’t surprised to see the regular response to a “Halp! My HP Printer is Admin Locked” query being an HP employee posting “I have sent the secret sauce to your Inbox.” Which is no use to anybody – except the recipient. Could I be bothered posting the same question & waiting for the same answer? No, I could not.
Some quick hackity hack hack hack on the keyboard & I found myself a copy of the secret sauce email. Which will no longer be secret sauce, from today the solution will be just plain old sauce. Because there’s no need to keep this knowledge secret any more. It’s not that important, releasing this information will cause exactly zero deaths. Nobody die.
OK, so your HP Printer is Admin Locked. Here’s what you do:
From the home screen press the unlit Return icon 3 times very quickly. The screen will then change to show a single menu item – “Support Menu” which you’ve never seen before.
Next, yes, you’ve guessed it – Press “Support Menu”
Use the up / down arrows to select “Resets Menu” & press OK. By now, you’re feeling the thrill of the chase.
You can select either of two choices:
Partial reset
Semi-Full reset – grab this one to clear your Admin Lock & return the HP Printer to out-of-box settings. Selecting this will turn the printer off, so you’ll need to use the Power On switch to fire it up again.
Follow those simple steps & your printer has returned control to you. \0/