PrintMonitor FAQ

1. Printing monitor does not work, the journal displays messages FindFirstPrinterNotification fail.

PrintMonitor initial workflow is as following: it connects to a printer ('opens' a printer) and then it tries to subscribe to the printer messages and to receive the first reply from the printer about its readiness.

The most common reason for such an error is a lack of access rights for this service. The service is started under system account, which by default has no access rights to the system resources. Solution: run the service under a particular user account which has a right to access the printer in the network. As a test you may try to run the service under domain administrator account and see the results.

The second most common reason is a printer audition restriction. Check if printer audition was restricted on purpose.

2. At service start up an error comes up: "Microsoft Management Console: Could not start the pmonitor service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion"

It is possible that the error is cause by an old version of MDAC component on the computer. The latest version of MDAC you can download from Microsoft website. A setup file name is MDAC_TYP.EXE. http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/mdac/downloads/default.aspx

3. PrintMonitor does not count copies of printed documents. Several copies have been sent, but the journal displays only one.

PrintMonitor receives the info about pages printed from Windows Print Spooler. Unfortunately, some models of printers do not provide this information. Sometimes, to get the required info it is enough to disable "Enhanced printing capabilities". To turn this feature off, open printer settings dialog box, go to "Advanced" tab and uncheck "Enable enhanced printing capabilities" checkbox. Also, it one experiences such a problem, it's recommended to use EMF data format instead of RAW in the print processor.

Starting PrintMonitor Standard version 3.3, for printers connected to a PC where PrintMonitor service is running, there is an "extended monitoring" mode is available. When enabled, it allows to monitor correct numbers of pages printed even if the spooler has wrong data. At the present time such a monitoring is enabled for printer drivers which use the following printing language formats: EMF, PCL5, PCL5e, ZIMF, PCL6+PJL. The list is constantly widening. For more information regarding the supported formats list please contact PrintMonitor Customer Support Service.

4. Is it possible to monitor network printers?

PrintMonitor Standard monitors any printers present in the operating system (any shared printers as well). For prints connected directly to the network there is PrintMonitor Pro edition, which supports the whole variety of possible printer configurations and connections.

5. Do you plans for PrintMonitor to support Windows 98/Me?

No. There are no such plans.

6. In the log files there is "Total Pages" set, but "Printed Pages" are always zero, and printing cost calculation does not work because of that. What's a problem?

Usually this happens when a print job has been started from a computer with Windows 98 operating system. Sometimes the problem can be fixed by installing printer drivers from printer manufacturer instead of using Windows own drivers. Unfortunately, very often it's hard to find properly working driver for this OS and the problem remains unresolved.

7. The printing journal does not seem to be correct. It is filled with messages Printer Deleted.

It is possible that you are trying to monitor a printer connected to a PC with Windows 95. PrintMonitor properly works only on computers with Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 operating systems and only with printers connected to computers with those operating systems. If you experience Printer Deleted problem on a computer with Windows NT, please contact PrintMonitor Customer Support Service for help.

8. Instead of user name there is Guest in the print journal.

Most likely the users connect to a shared printer under Guest account. To fix the problem, adjust printer access rights for each user individually. An optimal solution can be creating of separate users group for each printer.

9. Printing journal displays weird symbols instead of a document name.

Check Regional Settings on the computer where PrintMonintor is installed. Select your local language (e.g. Russian) as a language for 'non-Unicode' applications. To do so, open Control Panel, Regional and Language Options. Switch to Advanced tab there. In the combo box for non-Unicode applications select required language.