How to make Win7 machine ALWAYS connect to a networked printer/computer?

I have used a Win10 junk laptop to share a printer at the kitchen. However, for some reason my connection to it through one of the Win7 machine will loose connection to it
1)after power down
2)once a while in during operation.

Since my Server terminal(Win10) is always on, it did not have the connection issue and the cashier machine(Win7) seems NOT to have teh lost connection issue.

I have set all machines to “remember credential” when connecting to the shared kitchen machine

I would personally avoid sharing printers and just install network printers individually on each machine but with exact printer name. This way even if 1 terminal is down… printer stays connected and will still print

Yeah we highly discourage sharing printers. We always buy network printers if it needs to be shared.

Agreed to using network printer but unfortunately the printers I got at hands are a bit notorious in setting up the IP and supporting Chinese at the same time hence come my hedged solution with a shared printer. :frowning:
BTW, I found it seems to be the auto reboot by Win10 that caused it. I fixed it by changing the “orchestrater” to make it NOT to reboot after auto update. So far no more lost connection credentials.

1 Like

Which printers are you using?

I am using Hillpow and also SymCode(trying to use more than one printer on the same PC. The former ones have a notorious driver issue that it seems unable recognize a second copy of the driver.

This one can easily support Chinese but hard to make more than printer per PC
https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Printer-Supports-Warranty-Interface/dp/B01N9AU643/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497935773&sr=8-2&keywords=hillpow+printer

This one “seems” can install more than one printer per PC but “seems” cannot set Chinese character code page with the software from the CD.
https://www.amazon.com/Symcode-MJ-8250-Thermal-Receipt-Printer/dp/B01G6E3LFO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497935944&sr=8-1&keywords=symcode+printer

The second printer i have experience with and i use them often for my clients. You can install multiple instances of them and can set their ip addresses using their software for the driver. However you can install them even using the generic driver which comes default with windows and works fine.

Kendash has experience with the hillpow one.

If you have multiple of the second printer then i would highly suggest use them on a network, they will work better and more redundant than the hillpow one

Thanks for the pointers. I have asked the Amazon community how to set the Chinese support in it but so far no answers including the seller. Hope some good news soon.

1 Like

Even if u share also, try with Ip instead of using system name, give ip manually and share the printer, then give system Ip n printer name on sambapos.

Will try that and see what happen.

Do you have the “tools” other than the one that comes in the CD? The factory tried to send it to me but Windows Defender says it has malware, so it auto delete it. Not sure whether that’s a malware coming from the file sharing website site of it is actually in the “tools” Do you have any info on this part?

It’s difficult to say really. If the factory is using baidu drive (or whatever it is called - the Chinese version of Google Drive), Google Chrome will always flag the site as hosting malicious code even it isn’t. I’ve had to download a file from there before and was forced to use Internet Explorer (it was a firmware file for a device so no risk of malware).

Definitely if you need to enable Chinese support on a printer, you need the tools to change the code page of the printer. However, this is a printer setting and will have nothing to do with how you connect to the printer (network or USB / shared printer).

I have found in the past trying to enable Chinese support on printers doesn’t work as expected - I have enabled it then found some other needed characters are missing in the Chinese font. For example, in the UK, we use £ for the currency, but the £ symbol is missing from the Chinese character set.

When I need to use Chinese for a client, I just use Document Printer in V5 and bypass all the hassle with the printer. Yes, it’s a bit more effort to setup the printer templates, but also you get a lot more flexible formatting options so it’s worth a look.

Read the section titled “Advanced Ticket Print Templating format” in the first post on this topic:

2 Likes

Your suggestion give rise to my curiosity whether that will solve another issue I want to “hack” these type of POS printers for ages. Since you mentioned Document Printer, I assume it will use some graphics mode like the window drivers for them and if such, there may be a label software out there that can use these printer just like a Brother QL700 - directly draw some box and type some text and print a label out. If so, I can use the same printer for printing quick msg without setting yet one equipment on the counter. My counter is all filled with equipment now :frowning:

As long as you are using the correct drivers, you can print to your thermal printer from any windows application. So a box with text inside, you could do that even with MS Word if you had it installed.

As for the label software, most I’ve seen are setup for printing specifically to label printers (they use the TSC language to communicate with the printer and not using like a windows printer). As you know Brother label printers are different also (not supporting TSC) but although they also work from any windows application, the Brother label printing software will only print to Brother printers.

You can always try installing some label printing software and see if it works. You can search online for Seagull which is one I’ve heard of (not free but likely a trial can be downloaded), or you can also search if there is any free or open source label printing software.

1 Like