Epilog connection issue

[David Rust]

Hi All,

I have an issue that is becoming worse. I hope someone can shed some light.

I have an Epilog Mini set up with a HP laptop and Corel. When I start working I send jobs to the laser without issues, however if I wait 5-10 minutes before I send another job I lose connectivity over the Ethernet. I have to unplug wait then reconnect the Ethernet connection to fix the problem. If I am not on top of it I'll send 2 or 3 jobs and they all pile up in que, then sometimes they will all go through, sometimes not. A few times I have had to shut off the Epilog and restart.

This may not be the laser, it could be the computer, but I am a little lost with the problem.

The Ethernet addresses are set up per the manual (with the aid of Epilog support when I first received the machine).

This is a new problem in the last two months.

Let me know if anybody has experienced this and found a solution.

Thank you,
Dave

[Bill George]

Go into your laptop Power Saving setup and disable anything that puts your computer to Sleep, turns off the Screen and Hard Drives. I suspect something along those lines is causing problems. Make sure you are Not connected to the Internet when trying to connect or use your machine.

I don't know if your using Windows 7 or not, seems like there are constant upgrades to download. At least 2 or 3 a week.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Also check the power management of your network card. It may be set to "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

Is the ethernet cable plugged directly into the laptop & laser or do you connect to some sort of hub? If the power management issues do not resolve the problem, I would start looking at swapping out the cable and/or device to see if something is starting to go bad.

[Mike DeRegnaucourt]

I have the same problem but over USB and I am connected to a desktop PC. It seems to happen randomly. I will send a job over to the laser and it won't show up on the laser. I unplug the USB cable and plug it back in and sometimes that will get the job to come through to the laser...other times nothing. Sometimes I've even had to try moving the USB cable to another USB port on the PC and that may or may not work. I've had to reboot the PC sometimes to get it to work. Sometimes I've had to turn the laser off and back on again. It just seems totally random. It is so frustrating when it happens.

One of the more annoying things is when the Epilog driver totally locks up CorelDraw! The only way out of that one is to bring up the Task Manager and kill CorelDraw and hope that the file you were working on has been auto-saved so you do not have to start over from scratch. I usually try and remember to do a Save just prior to opening the Epilog driver because you just never know if this will be one of the times it puts CorelDraw in a death lock!

[Glen Monaghan]

Mike, you ought to talk with Epilog about checking your setup for problems. I've been using a couple of their machines for several years and never once had their driver lock up CorelDraw, so I suspect you have some other problem in your system, possibly related to your USB (I've always used ethernet connections).

[Mike DeRegnaucourt]

Mike, you ought to talk with Epilog about checking your setup for problems. I've been using a couple of their machines for several years and never once had their driver lock up CorelDraw, so I suspect you have some other problem in your system, possibly related to your USB (I've always used ethernet connections).

Hi Glen,

Yeah, I really should give Epilog a call. I just need to make the time and do it. I have not tried using an Ethernet cable yet. I did not mean to hijack the OP's thread. I saw what appeared to be a similar problem and thought I would throw in my experience too.

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris J Anderson]

One of the more annoying things is when the Epilog driver totally locks up CorelDraw!

Mike,
I have had this happen, and found one cause of it was being too fast with opening the print driver and printing.
I use keyboard shortcuts a lot and if I just go ctrl+p then enter, without pausing for a second or so, it will lock up.
Just try slowing up a bit if you are doing the print part fairly quickly, it may help.

cheers,
Chris

[Mike DeRegnaucourt]

, and found one cause of it was being too fast with opening the print driver and printing.
Chris

Thanks Chris! I have noticed that and have purposely tried to pause for a bit after clicking print but before selecting the Epilog driver from the drop-down list. We also have a regular HP laser printer (actually a couple of different printers) connected to this PC and have the HP as our default. It does seem that the lockup of CorelDraw does happen more often when selecting print and then NOT pausing for awhile before selecting the Epilog driver but not always. This only ever happens with the Epilog driver and NOT with our HP driver or any of the other drivers. That leads me to believe the problem is in the Epilog driver...especially now that I have heard the same thing happen to you too Chris. I have even tried switching between running the 32-bit version and the 64-bit version...still the same problem.

Thanks,
Mike

[Larry Allred]

I have the same problem but over USB and I am connected to a desktop PC. It seems to happen randomly. I will send a job over to the laser and it won't show up on the laser. I unplug the USB cable and plug it back in and sometimes that will get the job to come through to the laser...other times nothing. Sometimes I've even had to try moving the USB cable to another USB port on the PC and that may or may not work. I've had to reboot the PC sometimes to get it to work. Sometimes I've had to turn the laser off and back on again. It just seems totally random. It is so frustrating when it happens.

One of the more annoying things is when the Epilog driver totally locks up CorelDraw! The only way out of that one is to bring up the Task Manager and kill CorelDraw and hope that the file you were working on has been auto-saved so you do not have to start over from scratch. I usually try and remember to do a Save just prior to opening the Epilog driver because you just never know if this will be one of the times it puts CorelDraw in a death lock!

I've found Corel tends to lock up when you're getting low on memory. Easy fix is increase RAM or have fewer things open and running.

[Ivan Shuliak]

Had the same issue which was resolved by updating the corel draw X7 to the latest X7 version.
Don't know if this going to help you though