Virtual Printer keeps dropping connection to the printers, and then reconnecting. Help or advice please!
The printers should work fine on a desktop PC via USB cable. We have some that way. Are the USB printers shared on the desktop so another PC can see them by browsing to \\computername ?
Even if you connec the printers via ethernet, they'll still need to connect into a print server somehow with the Virtual printer app installed. It's certainly easier to manage them on 1 print server under one virtual printer app than individually connected to desktop PCs.
Fedor Dzjuba
Recommendation:
1) Make sure printers are on your network instead of connected directly to a PC via USB.
2) Install 2 or even 3 copies of Virtual Printer on 2 or 3 separate PCs in your office or warehouse
3) point them all to the same printers and make sure you called them the same
4) this will ensure you have fallback, if for any reason one of the virtual printer clients disconnected from the network/internet or your router is kicking up a fuss, another one will take over.
Common issues:
If you directly connected a printer to a PC via USB its a single point of failure with two potential issues. 1) Your PC may have connectivity issues, we use sockets which maintain live connection to a server, anything happens to your network the Virtual Printer client will disconnect and try to reconnect again, which will cause Virtual Printer being disconnected. 2) When a printer connected directly to your PC, if your PC glitches out or anything going wrong with USB drivers it will disconnect the printer and virtual printer will not know about the issue until its trying to send data to it. Network connected printers rely on spooling protocol which is somewhat independent of your PC.
Fedor Dzjuba
Here is the Knowledge Base article with video where we explain how to do the above
Matthew Dahan
Hello,
We have an issue with the virtual printer app on all our packing stations -the printers keep connecting and disconnecting, (or not connecting at all!), even though they show as being online. Both printers will be knocked out at the same time, so I'm assuming this is a network communication issue.
Was wondering if anyone here had the same experience, and what was done to remedy it? (We're not getting far with support..)
We have allowed app access to port 80, TCP 1433 and 5079 from windows defender, and also whitelist linnworks.net from our router firewall. We do not use Adblock or other browser extensions.
Our printers are Zebra ZM600's with each once connected to it's own packing desk PC via USB. (should the printers be connected directly via ethernet, for the virtual printer app to run properly? - this is the only avenue we have not explored...)
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!