Anyone else having print problems with Bixolon 275?

[Courtright]

Hello,

I thought I had this figured out but this morning it came back to bite me in the butt.  I am using the software with the Bixolon 275 receipt printer on x64 Windows 7.  I first tried installing the driver software from the CD but it would not install correctly on this system as to how the directions said it should.  So I went to their website and found an updated driver that installed great and removed the conflicting driver in the process.  I also (from the recommendation of Ronald) installed a generic print driver to use which works as well.  The problem that I am having is that the system will work fine, print receipts and kick the drawer open.  But after a few hours of being idle (leaving it overnight or walking away from it) if we come back and make a sale the sale finishes fine however it does not print a receipt and will not kick the drawer open.  Instead the "receipt print" is sitting down in the printer toolbar "spooling" to be printed.  We can do make 10 sales and there will be 10 print jobs waiting the queue. Even if we restart the POS software it will not print, the only way to make it print is to restart the computer.  after the reboot it sends all 10 print jobs to the printer and will kick the drawer open.

Any ideas on how to fix this?  it is becoming a real hassle when we have a line of customers and have to restart the computer in order to get the printer to work. 

I just though of something to at least try, I am going to set it to print directly to the printer and not spool.  I will update my progress.

[ronaldrwl]

I'm going to forward this to the manufacture to see if they know what is happening.

[Courtright]

Ronald, yes I try to restart the print jobs but to no avail.  Only thing I can do is cancel them but even if I cancel all of them and clean out the active print jobs it still will not print a sale if I try another one.  I have messed around with it greatly and the ONLY option is to restart the entire system.  As soon as the computer reboots (before I even have a chance to click on anything) the receipts print out if I did not clear them and the drawer kicks open.

It's almost as if it times out.  I can definitely see in the Summer it being a problem.  In July & August we have a constant line at the register and speed is everything.  If we have to restart the computer it could take minutes and I am also afraid of an employee messing up and now the register balance would be off at the end of the night because they tried to ring up the sale again thinking it did not go through.

Any helpful advice you can get from the manufacturer would be great.  I have downloaded the latest drivers directly from their site as well.  I thought it fixed it, but after about 6 hours it did it again.  I set it to print directly to the printer so hopefully it wont spool and get stuck, not sure if it will help but it's worth a try.

I remember seeing a post about speeding up receipt printers.  Is it possible to speed up the SRP275?  And is it hard to adjust those settings?

Thanks for the help!

[ronaldrwl]

I talked to the tech support at Bixolon.  They said to change your power saver settings on the computer.  It's OK to use Hibernate but don't use Sleep.

[Courtright]

That very well might be it.  I will try it and let you know how it goes.  Thank you. =)