Label Printer Has Randomly Stopped Working

PTS usually connects to label printers over the network via printer sharing. Very occasionally, for apparently no reason, the printer will simply stop responding to PTS print commands.

Symptoms

Despite there being no changes made to the printer configuration, all of a sudden users report that the printer will not print PTS labels. Some basic investigation might reveal that the PC and printer can still print local documents.

Cause

If there really have been no changes made to the printer, the PC, the printer share configuration etc. the printer is probably stuck in an error state on the PTS application server. This typically occurs when a label is printed when the printer is temporarily offline such as during a brief network outage, or if the host PC was busy or unavailable for some other reason (e.g. powered off). Frustratingly, once the printer is in an error state the server will refuse to print any subsequent documents, even if the temporary issue has passed, and will just add the documents to the back of the non-moving queue. Sadly this is just how printer sharing works in Windows.

Solution

First of all it's important you do not start making changes to the printer configuration just yet; it's probably unnecessary and you may turn a simple issue into a complicated one.

Log in to the PTS server and find the printer mapped in Devices and Printers in the server's control panel. You should see that it is in an error state, and that there are multiple documents stuck in the queue. Simply cancel all of the documents. If there have been no changes to the environment that are causing an underlying problem, the printer should start working again.

Once you are satisfied that the issue is now resolved and therefore have confirmed that the errored documents were the only problem, you should consider downloading the "Print Queue Monitor Service" from the Miscellaneous Downloads page and install it on the server. This automatically deletes errored documents from the spooler and prevents the printer from randomly stopping, but it isn't designed to address any other printer issues.

If a problem remains, begin working through the network printer troubleshooting section of the label printer installation page.

If network printing is proving too unreliable consider switching to browser based printing.