If you’re not an IT person supporting printers using HP Web JetAdmin software, tune out now.

What, you’re still reading. I am surprised!

OK, here is some background. HP Web JetAdmin is software that monitors network attached printers and provides alerts when certain conditions are met. For example, if the toner is low or there is a paper jam, it can alert you, allowing you to be proactive with support. It means that you can purchase toners when alerted rather than holding a large stock or being caught on the hop when all the colour printers are out and no-one has mentioned it until 5 minutes before a critical print job.

Anyway, we had been using this software for some years at work without any problems. You would just get the alert email with a summary of the issue and a link allowing you to open the admin interface in a web browser. Recently, we had some major network changes which resulted in the IP addresses being changed for all our network devices (including computers and printers). After the changes, and rediscovering the new printers (some of their details changed as well), the Web JetAdmin software continued to work as before. Unfortunately, this also included the link to open the admin interface. It was still using the old IP address which was no longer valid.

After ‘googling’ for the solution without luck, I tried several approaches, some of which got me into a bit of a mess with the database. In the end I got the software re-installed, only to find it was still hooked into the old database and the old information.

To cut to the chase, the solution is really simple. In the c:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Web Jetadmin 10\WJABackupRestore folder run the backup script to produce a backup set. I had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in the script due to a non-standard installation.

Once you have the backup, open the file ‘HP.Imaging.Wjp.Core.WebServer.config.xml‘ in the Settings\WjaService\config folder and modify the IP address to the new address.

e.g.
<property name=”HostIPv4Address”>
<type>HP.Imaging.Wjp.Sdk.Core.Framework.ConfigurationItemString</type>
<value>192.168.50.125</value>
</property>

Run the restore script and allow it to overwrite the existing database. I also had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in this script due to my non-standard installation.

Your emails will now contain the correct link to launch the admin interface.

Hopefully this will save someone a lot of time.