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Printing with Windows

Using the Printer Utilities

Accessing the printer utilities
Using Printer and Option Information
Speed & Progress

EPSON printer utilities allow you to check the current printer status and do some printer maintenance from your screen.

EPSON Status Monitor 3

You use the EPSON Status Monitor 3 utility to check the printer status and the level of ink remaining in each cartridge.

Nozzle Check

To find out if nozzles are delivering ink properly, you can print a nozzle check pattern. If the nozzles are not delivering ink properly, missing dots will be evident in the print pattern. Printer nozzles for seven colors can be checked at a time.

Caution:

Before you start printing images, make sure that nozzle check pattern printing is complete. Otherwise, print quality may decline.

Head Cleaning

When printing quality declines, or when clogged nozzles are evident after the nozzle check, the print heads need to be cleaned. Use this utility to perform the head clean, then perform the Nozzle Check again, as repeat head cleaning may be necessary.

Print Head Alignment

Print head alignment is necessary when a misalignment of vertical lines appears in the head alignment test pattern, or when banding is evident in your printouts. You can perform a more complete head alignment using the printer's control panel. See Performing the print head alignment.

Printer and Option Information

This utility allows the printer driver to confirm printer configuration information. It also provides specific information regarding certain characteristics of the printer, such as Cartridge Option, the Printer ID. See Using Printer and Option Information.

Note:

Make sure that the printer is finished printing before performing the Nozzle Check, Head Cleaning, or Print Head Alignment utilities. Otherwise your printout may be marred.

Accessing the printer utilities

By accessing the printer software, the printer driver and utility menus appear in the printer software window. To use the printer utilities, click the Utility tab in the printer software window, then, click the button of the utility you want to use.

Note:

The letter in parentheses after the utility name indicates the shortcut key for that utility. Press ALT and the letter on the keyboard to open that utility.

While printing is in progress, pressing any of the utility buttons, except the EPSON Status Monitor 3 button, may mar your printouts.

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Using Printer and Option Information

Depending on the configuration of your system, the information displayed in the Printer and Option Information dialog box may be updated automatically, or may need to be updated manually.

If a message appears in the Current Settings window prompting you to enter settings, or if you change the printer's configuration, follow the steps below to make the necessary settings manually.

In the Cartridge Option box, select a combination for the installed black ink cartridges you have installed in your printer.

Load paper in the printer, then click the Settings Sheet button in the Printer and Option Information dialog box. Information on your printer and options is printed out similar to that below.

Printer ID #1: 50-50-50-50-50-50
Printer ID #2: 50-50-50-50-50-50

Make sure the information in the utility matches the printed information. If not, adjust the information on the screen to match the printed information.

Click OK to save your settings and exit the menu.

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Speed & Progress

You can make settings related to print speed and progress in this dialog box. To enable the Speed & Progress button, open the printer software window.

Note:

To enable the Speed & Progress button, click Start, Settings, Printer, right-click your printer icon, Properties, then Utility tab.

The available settings are as follows.

High Speed Copies

To print multiple copies of your document faster, select High Speed Copies.

Show Progress Meter

To monitor the progress of your print job, select Show Progress Meter.

EPSON Printer Port (For Windows Me, 98, and 95 only)

To speed up the data transfer rate to EPSON printers, select EPSON Printer Port.

If your computer supports ECP mode, enable DMA transfer to speed up printing.

For more details, see Using Speed & Progress.

Always Spool Raw Datatype (For Windows 2000 and NT only)

Select this check box to have Windows 2000 and NT-based clients spool documents using the RAW format instead of the EMF (metafile) format. (Windows 2000 and NT-based applications use the EMF format by default.)

Try using this option if documents spooled in EMF format do not print correctly.

Spooling RAW datatype requires fewer resources than EMF, so some problems ("Insufficient Memory/Disk Space to Print", "Slow print speed", etc.) can be solved by selecting the Always spool RAW datatype check box.

When spooling RAW datatype, print progress as displayed by the Progress Meter may differ from actual printing progress.

Monitoring Preferences

Click this button to open the Monitoring Preferences dialog box where you can make settings for EPSON Status Monitor 3. See Making monitoring preference settings.

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