The fulfillment department where I work fills orders through
a virtual machine. They also print labels through this virtual machine. Every
time an order is completed the vm moves to the next order and prints. They are
using datamax m-class and h-class label printers. Windows 7 64 bit. I believe
the stock windows print drivers. The latest version of bartender (which
generates the barcodes) and sql server I believe 2000. The labels would instantaneously
print as soon as the order was brought up no problem. It was like this for
years. Occasionally the error message saying print driver host for 32 bit apps
has stopped. But had no effect on workflow. You could simply close the error
message and keep going. However recently (about 6 months now) when an order is
initially pulled up the little load wheel just spins for a while and nothing
happens. Then the infamous “switch to or retry” box pops up as if the server is
not responding. But after a while of waiting and not clicking either switch to
or retry (anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes) the label finally pops out and
you can fill like nothing is wrong and the labels will print instantaneously from
then on. But sometimes once you get going it will come up again, print one more
label and then bartender crashes followed by a message saying the rpc server is
unavailable. Currently you can get around this by killing all tasks and
restarting everything but then you have to wait again. This is causing huge
delays in workflow and is very frustrating. We have upgraded to the latest
bartender. We have tried installing seagulls drivers. We have even gotten a
clean pc and started from scratch and it still happened. It is happening on
every work station. I work in IT and this is crazy to me being that It just
happened out of nowhere. Now we have no problem at all instantaneously printing
from Oracle to fill orders, only through the vm do we start to have problems.
How could we resolve this? And is there an easier way than updating the servers
because that is looking like our only option (if it will even work).