Hi,
i'm in too. Perhaps it was my fault, but there should be a fix nonetheless. And definitely a "legal" way to apply the latest firmware and enable web services again.
Long story: After changing a yellow cartridge to another non-hp refilled fake chip brand, i thought i had a firmware related problem with the printer rejecting those . It reported this yellow Cartridge was malfunctioning. I put in the empty one, that had been in before, and now the printer also reported it as malfunctioning.
I researched and read about similar problems with "firmware banned" non-hp supplies and therfore decided to downgrade firmware. This is only possible by directly binary copying the firmware file to the printer share (copy / b xxxx.ful \\localhost\printershare ) where xxx.ful is the unzipped firmware file. The firmware file is packed in the downloadable .exe firmware updater package from hp. It can be extracted using zip or killing the genuine .exe and looking at the temporary folder.
"printershare" is the share name of the printer installed on the pc and shared in network, to make it available as target for direct copying files over network to it. It definitely took a while to find an older firmware package on the hp ftp servers . But then this hack downgrade (the original procedure won't allow downgrading) actually worked. After the copy command the printer first first reported "printing" like an accepted print job but the rebooted, showing a 5 step firmware upgrade progress on display and after automatically rebooting once again and printing an alignment page it was back to old firmware CKP1CN1545AR.
But reverting to this old firmware did not fix my problem. Meanwhile -during my searches in internet - automatic online firmware upgrade - i forgot to turn it off - applied latest firmware 2011AR again.
Finally - when putting in a new genuine yellow HP 951 XL Cartridge, which my printer still reported as defective, I recognized that the problem was related to the printhead, which might have run dry in the yellow chamber. Having not much to lose anymore, I decided to try the tin foil hack : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKwGVq4MSE
After this my printer works perfect again - except web services.
And- in spite this happened automatically after first downgrade - it won't let me update firmware any more. Not even by directly copying the new firmware file , as i did with the old one. It just won't accept this file. The original updater reports not applicable and the .ini hack (change check download from 1 to 0) only leads to "sent failed" in the log. Just like an attempted hack copy /b fails.
A "semi full" reset procedure didn't change anything. And I think I won't risk a full reset bricking my printer, because it seams to me, that firmware - due to my hack - might be somehow "inconsistent" / corrupted. And I have a brand new expensive set of genuine cartridges and even the refills work again.
I always can apply firmware 1545A the "hack way", but as it seems I'm somehow stuck to this.
Regards
Alex