Epson D78 - prints but communication error

billieboy_2

Bought a new Epson D78 a couple of weeks ago and although it prints, every time it annoyingly keeps coming up with a communication error and won't show the status of the ink cartridges. Have had various communications with epson who advised I uninstall and reinstall the drivers, change the usb cable, try on another computer, etc all of which I have tried. Eventually they suggested, as it was such an unusual problem, taking it to an Epson Express which I did and they just swapped it for another printer same model. Have just installed new printer and it's still coming up with the same problem. Does anyone know, is it a major problem to not have the ink levels showing or will the printer tell me when they are low anyway? Have looked at the SSC service utility (http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml and it seems this printer isn't supported yet. I would be grateful for any ideas. Thanks in advance.

Mizz_Pink

Are you running Vista or XP ? Try running Epson Status Monitor from Epson website if you havent tried that already.

billieboy_2

Mizz_Pink wrote: »

Are you running Vista or XP ? Try running Epson Status Monitor from Epson website if you havent tried that already.

Sorry I hadn't been notified that anyone had replied. I'm running 2000 professional and I tried the Epson Status Monitor which showed a communication error as well. I've decided to keep this one as it prints really well. So as long as I know when the ink has run out I'll be okay (I hope). Thanks for your reply.

billieboy_2

In the end I was about to take the printer back again as the black ink had run out but there was no way of moving the ink cartridge to replace it. Had a lightbulb moment in the middle of the night and got up and downloaded a driver from the Epson website. Worked straight away!

Halmanator

I found a work-around, if not an actual solution, to a similar problem. I have an Epson CX5800F all-in-one (printer/scanner/fax) which talks to my computer via USB (direct connection - no hub). My O/S is Windows XP Home Edition, SP2. For about a year, the printer worked flawlessly under this configuration. Then one day I went to print a document and nothing happened. I could see my document in the spooler. The status read "Printing". There were no error messages. But the printer's status panel showed only the current time, as though it wasn't receiving any data (which it wasn't) and the Epson Status Monitor never appeared.

Looking at the Print Preferences panel, I noticed that the ink levels were not showing. After much experimentation and hair-pulling, I found that my PC could talk to the printer if I rebooted it - for about two minutes. If I displayed the Status Monitor immediately after a reboot, with my printer on, it would show the ink levels, the printer status showed "Ready" and everything looked normal for about 1 to 2 minutes. Then suddenly, without me doing anything to either the PC or the printer, the ink levels would disappear and the printer status would change to "Searching". A moment later, the Status Monitor reported a Communication Error. This was consistently repeatable, every time.

The scanner still worked, so there was nothing wrong with the USB port or the cable. A buddy of mine happens to own the same model all-in-one, so I borrowed his and plugged it into my PC. The same thing happened, which proved that it wasn't the printer either.

The problem is with Epson's Status Monitor. It seems to have trouble receiving the printer's status information and ink levels for some reason. This causes the driver to refuse to talk to the printer. Since it worked fine for the longest time, I assume that something got corrupted - probably in the registry. Of course, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, along with the Status Monitor. This did not fix the problem, which really !!!!ed me off, because it should have done so. I even tried manually searching for and deleting all references to both the CX5800F and "Epson" (since the all-in-one is the only Epson peripheral that was attached) from the registry using Regedt32 after first uninstalling the drivers and then reinstalling everything, and even that didn't work.

It's worth mentioning here that I sent two e-mails to Epson Support describing my problem in detail, along with everything that I had tried, and they never even bothered answering me. I did receive automatic confirmations that they had received my e-mails, so they don't have the excuse of not having received my request. I couldn't be bothered to phone them because I knew that I would likely wind up talking to some moron with less technical savvy than my own who would be following a standard script and simply tell me to try all the obvious stuff that I'd already tried (check the USB cable, reinstall the software, etc.)

Okay, if you have an Epson printer (any Epson printer that uses the Epson Status Monitor - not necessarily just a CX5800F) and you've read this far, you're probably anxiously hoping for a solution. Well, I'm afraid I don't have one, but I do have a work-around that will at least allow you to print. First, disable the Status Monitor. You can do this by displaying your print preferences, clicking on the Maintenance tab, then clicking on the Speed and Progress button and, finally clicking the Disable Status Monitor checkbox so that it shows a checkmark.

Now, this alone may not solve the problem. I found the above suggestion in several other threads and just doing that alone didn't work for me. Even with the status monitor disabled, my document still wasn't sent to the printer. It's almost like the driver was still trying to get information back from the printer, even with the Status Monitor disabled. So I also turned off bi-directional printing. You can do this by right-clicking your printer in Control Panel, selecting Properties, clicking on the Ports tab and then clicking the Bi-directional Print checkbox so that it is NOT checkmarked. Bi-directional printing is only necessary when you need to receive information from the printer. If you turn it off, you can still send information TO the printer, you just can't get anything back FROM it. Doing this, along with disabling the Status Monitor allowed me to print. Note that turning off bi-directional printing with the Status Monitor enabled will NOT work because then the Status Monitor wants to receive status information from the printer and is unable to do so.

This is a work-around, not a fix. The downside of this is that you won't be able to see your print progress or your ink levels when you print a document. However, in the case of the CX5800F, you can check your ink levels using the printer's LCD status panel. As for the print progress, well, you can sort of tell that by looking at how much of the paper has fed through the printer.

If anyone affiliated with Epson, especially Epson Support, is reading this, GET YOUR ACTS TOGETHER, FOLKS! To start with, put this solution on your support site's knowledge base or FAQ. There are lots of references to this problem all over the web, yet NOTHING on your support site! Better yet, fix the damned Status Monitor! And for cryin' out loud, give your customers some decent support! Don't ignore e-mail requesting help! I'm very happy with my CX5800F in general, but this one problem makes it impossible for me to recommend Epson products to anyone else. It's not worth the grief.