Why Do I Have a Red Light on My Dye Sublimation Printer!?!

Did you know that there is a common place within the print driver that will provide information about errors that generate on your printer?

The common name for this place is called the “Status Monitor”. It doesn’t matter the printer, the only change is the terminology that differs in the printing preferences. For instance, the tabs in the print driver dialog box will either say “utility” or ” maintenance”. An explanation of printer related errors.

Second, the status monitor will provide an explanation as to what the error is along with a resolution in resolving the problem. There are many other features that are available in this menu. Often, we can see the ink levels and whether the printer is “online” or “offline”. It will also tell us if there is a communication error with the computer sending the data to the printer.   

How to View The Status Monitor

To get to the status monitor from your PC:

Click “start”

Click “control panel”

Click “printers or devices”

Right click “printer preferences”

Click “maintenance or utility”

Click “status monitor”   

For the Mac:

Click “System Preferences”

Click “printers”

Select the printer model

Click “Printer Queue”

Click “Utility”   

Finally, errors that appear in the status monitor are generally hinted by a red light on the printer or the LCD will display a short note with a hot topic of the problem. This is to alert you that the printer has either stalled or is about to stall for some reason or another. The status monitor is like a cheat sheet for a resolve to that error.

Don’t get stumped by these fault lights. Make sure you are taking advantage of all the features that the peripheral offers.