Printer won't connect to wifi, freezes up sporadically

Question

Hi, I was really excited about the capabilities of this printer for about a day. It worked great on first setup out of the box. Here's what I did.
I'm using ubuntu 14.04 LTS and I was excited to be able to use the printer wirelessly without having to connect it to my computer. I unboxed the printer, plugged it into the wall, and ran the wireless setup wizard. That all worked fine and I typed in my SSID and home network password. The printer connected fine, and I was able to use my system's default printer control tool with the HPLIP HP Linux Printing and Imaging package to print documents wirelessly. Great!
I then printed some things straight off my phone. Great!
I then e-mailed some stuff to my printer through hpConnect the next day from work, and that worked. Great!
Fast forward to today, I queued up a few print jobs, and they don't print. Odd. Ok, I see my wireless indicator is flashing at me. Now is when the problems start.
- I've tried using the wireless setup wizard, and it just sits at "Now searching for wireless networks..."
- I've tried turning wireless off, and on again, and running wireless setup wizard. Same result
- I've tried "Restore Defaults" in the wireless menu and running wireless setup wizard. Same result
- I've tried "Restore Defaults" in the wireless menu in conjunction with resetting my wireless router. Same result
- I've tried "Restore Defaults" from the "Tools" device menu. Same result
- I've tried to use "Wireless Direct" just to see if I could get anything going, and it appears one of my neighbors has the same printer. I'm not exactly sure, but I can turn my printer off and the default "HP-PRINT-A1-ENVY 4500 series" SSID remains in my wireless networks list. Anyway, when I try to connect to this network, it asks for a password. I tried to supply the password my printer gives me, and it rejects me. Then I set it to "no security" and the network in my wireless networks list remains, and it's a secured network. I'm unable to change the printer's SSID broadcasted name via the embedded web server because the printer cannot access my wifi network for which to provide me a portal to the embedded web server.
- I've tried Wifi protected setup. My router tells me it's in progress after I enroll it with the printer's WPS PIN, but the printer and my router just sit there until the printer WPS setup stage just times out after four minutes. Never had problems with my router, I suspect it's the printer just freezing up again. When the timer gets to 0 minutes, the printer just sits there. When I hit 'cancel' on the printer's device menu, my router's web server tells me it detected a problem. When I try to go back to PIN Setup in the WPS Menu, the printer device menu freezes and I have to unplug it.
- Many of the things I've tried result in the printer menu just freezing up and I have to unplug it and plug it back in again just to get access to the device menu.
- If I try to access "Advanced Settings", the device menu freezes
- If I try to use wireless setup wizard, sometimes the device menu freezes
I really would prefer not to have to plug the printer into my computer. Is there a way to solve this wirelessly? If not, I'll be returning this item.

Answer 1

Yeah, it's weird. It is definitely a bug in the printer software/printer wifi hardware as I had not even hard-wire connected my printer to any other devices. 
I was able to print by connecting it to my pc, but what is the point of purchasing a printer with wifi features if I have to connect it to my computer to print?