Networked printers in FM11

[Bazinga]

I have a question about Filemaker (any version) and networked printers. One of our clients is having trouble with their networked printer where FM11 will allow a once off print but then everytime after that will display a message that the port is not open and to go into the control panel and open a port. The networked printer is a Dell 3010CN Laserjet.

The client also has a shared printer connected via USB which is a Canon MP-780. Filemaker has no problems with the Canon printer until the Dell is used to print, causing both printers to then display the above error message. Outside of FM the printers work flawlessly. The only way to fix the problem is to restart FM.

Troubleshooting has involved installing newest drivers for both printers, reinstalling FM11 and switching off print spooling. Still the problem persists. The client is running Windows 7 64bit which I suspect may having something to do with the problem, but having said that we have a few clients with the same exact problem occurring on 32bit versions. I have heard that FM has had problems with networked printers since version 4?? On the contrary we have many clients using networked printers on different versions of FM without issue.

I am thinking this must either be a FM issue or a problem with printer drivers. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[systwo]

I have had the same problem and I can see that it has been a while since you posted this query so this may be too late but I seem to solve it by playing around with the printer spooling settings.

We have a networked HP3055 which had the same problem. I removed the spooling option and printed direct to the printer to this user and it seems to work.

Hope that helps.

Chris

[systwo]

Sadly this was not a permanent fix. The problem has re-occurred and I cannot work out what it could relate to.

If anybody has any ideas I would be interested.

Chris

[techguy]

I have the same problem with FMP 10 and windows 7 32bit. Randomly FM will not print to the selected network printer. FMP just hangs and has to be restarted. Communication is not lost with the printer as other applications will print to the selected printer OK throughout the hang process.

This happens randomly maybe once or twice a day and printing is fine the rest of the time. It happens with different network printers. Other FPM clients can print OK to the selected printer but the only remedy for the hung application is to restart it. The PC affected does not need to be rebooted, just FMP. the other XP client PCs are unaffected by any of this..... Can ANYONE shed any light on this issue

[swl]

Chime in one more person having this error on Windows 7 32 bit. This time in a FMv11 runtime solution, but ******* this error is aggravating...