How to fix error ” The printer driver cannot connect to the network print server”

printer

Scenario

We have a Label printer it's an Intermec PF8t that we are sharing over network. The Label printer is connected USB to a Windows XP machine and that machine serves as the printer server. The printer is shared over a TCP/IP port.

On the other end of the chain I got a user on a windows 7 64 bit machine that I want to connect to the Label printer. That was done successfully by going to start button, devices and printers, add printer, and adding the shared label printer from there.

The problem I want to get rid of is that when the user prints to the label printer it keeps showing this error:

The printer cannot connect to the network print server.

You may either try again to connect, or disable network features. If you disable network features , you can turn them on again later in the Network Settings dialog.

Without connectivity, features like bidirectional coomunication and configuration sharing will not be available. Press the help button for more information and possible solutions.

Right now as temporary fix we just click disable and the user can prints his labels no problem. But this error is starting to get really annoying. Since my user can print successfully I was wondering if there wouldn't be a way to possibly disable that error message, either by disabling a not needed service or even through registry or anything I just don't want this error popping for my user anymore.

Best Answer

I had the same problem with a Datamax-O'Neil label printer that's connected via Ethernet and hosted off a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 (print server), and I resolved the issue using the following steps:

  • On the print server I selected Properties for the printer (queue) in question.
  • Select the Tools tab.
  • There is a Driver Options... button I selected.
  • In the Driver Options window I selected the Network Settings tab.
  • I then checked off box Bidirectional Communication under the Network Features section and this did the trick.

I no longer get the dialog box with the error message when I connect to the printer from a Client PC. Hopefully this helps anyone else having the same problem.

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