Shared Printer won't work

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Richard Darling

Richard Darling

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Posts
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Loc
Bozeman, Montana
Here's my next PC problem. I now have 2 POS stations. One is the master for FrameReady, the other is the slave. The slave is my main station for product sales, and so the receipt printer (Star sp500) is connected to it. I set it to share the printer. ON the master station, I went to add printer, found the star printer in the shared printers, and added it. But it won't print a receipt from the master station. I get an error.

Is there something I'm missing? Neither computer is asleep. I don't have to restart anything do I? Does the driver software still have to be loaded onto any computer that's going to use it?
 
Are you able to print a test page (windows printer folder), from your server, to the printer which is being served at the slave?

If so, it may be a question for FrameReady. There may be a place within FR where the receipt printer needs to be defined/specified, for each machine.

If not, do either of the machines by any chance have an internet suite installed for antivirus? (one which also includes a firewall) ie: Norton Internet Security, McAfee Internet Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, etc. By default, the internet suite version for many of these programs will block printer and older sharing by default. The basic versions don't have this problem. NIS is notorious for this, in fact.

Mike
 
I first encountered the problem trying to print a test page from Windows. So I think it's a system issue, not Frameready.

I did just install Kaspersky Internet Security on the server. (Not an actual server, but acting as one for Frameready) If that is the issue, is there a way around it?
 
I haven't used the KIS version of Kaspersky, just the basic version (the one I usually recommend). It's possible that there's a setting in there that has to be enabled to allow Windows file and printer sharing. I believe that your FileMaker pro system has it's own transport method, which may be exempt.

One way to see if this is the issue, is to EXIT Kaspersky temporarily and see if that fixes the issue. If you reboot, it will re-enable. If this works, then you can go looking for the setting in the firewall area of the product.

Mike
 
For the version of Kaspersky you have, it should be close to this:

Open Kaspersky Internet Security

Click settings

Click system security

Click the settings button by firewall

Click the "networks" tab

Locate your network

Right click and change to trusted

Apply/OK this change

Restart your computer

Try printing again :)

Best regards,
Mike
 
Shared Printer wont work - solution

We have a similar setup, except our main POS is the master and the POS in the office is the slave(client). We circumvent the problem by making our printer (Brother brand) a network printer. This way you dont have to worry about sharing and dont need the sharing PC to be powered up. By making the printer a network printer, the drivers are installed on each client, for ex: The master POS, the client POS and even an unrelated laptop with a wireless card can print to the network printer. Brother brand laser network printers are sold at Cosco, Office Depot, and are fairly inexpensive.

Ernesto
 
I have all Brother printers. I bought them so that I can use the same TN350 toner cartridge. That way I can keep 1 spare and not have to keep track of individual cartridges for each printer. In fact, my old receipt printer is a Brother 2040. I wanted a receipt printer to reduce my receipt cost. I also don't like giving people a full page receipt, especially if they're only buying a notecard. I don't think the Star sp500 can be set up as a network printer - but I could be wrong.

Mike, I set the network to Trusted, and still get the error. I won't be back at that shop until Monday. But if you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
 
Did you do this on both computers? They'll need to be rebooted, too.

Mike
 
Well, it's possible that the program only reads the firewall settings when the computer is booted. Although it may not be necessary, rebooting can't hurt :)

You may also need to zap the printer from the printers folder, and set it up again, since it was never able to find the other end. In most cases, this is where it gets the drivers (from the printer's host pc). If the connection was blocked before, this step likely never happened.

Mike
 
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