Using the 'Status Monitor' Feature

Introduction

Our Windows PCL drivers support an Interactive help feature allows you to monitor the status of the printer at all times over the parallel, USB (if applicable) and network (if applicable) interfaces. As printer error's occur an icon automatically appears in the tasktray displaying the printer status.

To use the status monitor capability of your printer driver, you must also ensure that the Quick Print Setup utility is running in your task tray (as shown above - the white and blue icon next to the red icon). If this icon does not appear, you must first enable the Quick Print Setup utility before you proceed. If the Quick Print Setup option is not enabled, click here to learn how to enable it.

How to use the 'Interactive Help' feature

The status monitoring capability is disabled by default, to enable it simply move your mouse over the 'Quick Print Setup' icon located in the tasktray. You will see either

ON: Printer Status <Brother xxxx Series>

OFF: Printer Status <Brother xxxx Series>

Where 'xxxx' is the model name of your printer.

For example in the screen shot below the printer status option is set to 'OFF'.

To enable the 'Printer Status' click the Quick Print Setup icon to display the options that you can change. Now select the 'Printer Status <ON>' option as shown below.

The printer driver is now configured to add an icon to the printer whenever there is a printer problem.

Dealing with a problem

If you have installed the 'Interactive Help' feature, it is possible to get detailed help about how to resolve the problem that you have encountered. To do this, simply double click the red icon that appears in the tasktray when a problem occurs. For example, in the event of a printer running out of paper the following would happen:

Step 1: Icon appears in tasktray:

Step 2: Move mouse over icon:

Step 3: Double click the icon to see Flash movie:

Step 4: Fix the problem

Fix the printer problem and close the Interactive help window. If the problem has been resolved, the red icon will automatically disappear in the tasktray.

Did you know?

- You can change the properties of the status monitor option so that it appears as a floating window or writes information about printer problems to an ASCII file for later analysis.