[RESOLVED] Epson Status Monitor 3 failure in XP

[C.A.]

Way to go, Gary M....glad I read your reply to the problem, as I was just going to write the same solution.

I finally solved the Communication Error that occurs with Epson Status Monitor 3 on Windows XP. This worked for me and if you have the same situation, it should work for you.

The Problem

I have a print server (PC running XP) with an Epson 1280 attached via USB. The printer is shared on the network. When printing from the server, no problem, status monitor works fine. When printing from any machine on the network, the file prints but Status Monitor 3 shows a Communication Error and you can't see the ink level or printing progress.

The Solution

On the print server machine (the machine with the printer directly connected), open the printer control panel for the Epson printer (Start --> Settings --> Printers & Faxes --> Epson 1280). Select Properties under the Printer menu. From the Properties window, General tab, click on the Printing Preferences button. Select the Utilities tab and click on the Speed & Progress button at the bottom. From the Speed & Progress window click on the Monitoring Preferences button. From the Monitoring Preferences window click the checkbox marked "Allow monitoring of shared printers". Click OK button on all the windows. Now when the status monitor runs on other machines they will be able to monitor the shared printer.

--GaryM