Archived Printers?

[Formerplano]

Does anyone know any fixes for broken hip printers? We have a bunch of not working ones at my store and no one seems to know how to fix them. There's one that will only print 2 clearance tickets at a time. Then you have to restart it and it will print two more, and so on. I had to restart it 4 times to print 9 tickets the other week. There's also a couple that will just say "Please wait. Printer not ready" forever. They won't finish starting up or whatever.
Any tips or tricks will be appreciated. And if this is the wrong place for this, please let me know.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

Does anyone know any fixes for broken hip printers? We have a bunch of not working ones at my store and no one seems to know how to fix them. There's one that will only print 2 clearance tickets at a time. Then you have to restart it and it will print two more, and so on. I had to restart it 4 times to print 9 tickets the other week. There's also a couple that will just say "Please wait. Printer not ready" forever. They won't finish starting up or whatever.
Any tips or tricks will be appreciated. And if this is the wrong place for this, please let me know.

ensure they're all set to ZPL* (the * is important), or PDF (no star) if you're using mobile checkout.
barring that, call CSC for replacement

 

[Mikuhl]

My printer had a weird error today saying the battery is depleted. O_O

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

Related to printers... still having the issue that advance label button is broken after the mydevice or POS prints a label, it won’t work till you reboot, then as soon as you print a new label, broken again.

 

[Formerplano]

ensure they're all set to ZPL* (the * is important), or PDF (no star) if you're using mobile checkout.
barring that, call CSC for replacement

Thank you! I will check that next time I have one that doesn't work. I don't do Mobile Checkout, I just have issues printing clearance tickets when I'm doing price change.

 

[Amanda Cantwell]

Thank you! I will check that next time I have one that doesn't work. I don't do Mobile Checkout, I just have issues printing clearance tickets when I'm doing price change.

Then ZPL* is what they should be

 

[Ringwraith917]

There's a program on a couple of the computers (signing room and TMSC at my store) called TargetPrinterLoader or something like that. Plug the printer in via USB, run the program. Should fix the printer. I showed an ETL this at my store a while back and it seems to have worked.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

This^^^^. Make sure your printers are up to date.

 

[Mikuhl]

Noticed the * means that it will continue feeding until it finds a black bar. Do not try to use myCheckout with PDF*. Haha, it was a really long receipt!

 

[tholmes]

There's a program on a couple of the computers (signing room and TMSC at my store) called TargetPrinterLoader or something like that. Plug the printer in via USB, run the program. Should fix the printer. I showed an ETL this at my store a while back and it seems to have worked.

On that note, there are two different options in the PrinterLoader. One is Quick Setup and the other is Full Rebuild (or something to the effect). If you're experiencing consistent issues, I recommend doing a full rebuild. Just remember to get OPU labels to print a new printer ID label at the end of the process.
Also, there are two different link cables for the Zebra printers, the mini-USB cable works fine for the most part, but occasionally the printers will need the configuration cable which plugs into the back of the computer and a different slot on the printer.
There's also a setup/configuration guide on Workbench for this very purpose.

 

[tholmes]

Note that using the serial cable ( not mini USB ) on full rebuild can sometimes take 30/45 minutes to complete.

Very true. In some cases, though, I've found that the mini USB flat-out won't work. So, to amend my recommendation: use the mini USB first if it will work, then use the serial cable if that fails.