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The printer is a Network printer. Actually a normal printer connected using Ethernet. It's somehow acting as a printer server by itself. All documents sent to this printer disappear from the local queue instantaneously. I need a (somewhat) reliable way to confirm a successful printing. Right now I cannot assume a successful printing after a job is gone from the spooler, because even when the job seems to have completed (with completed status) in the spooler queue, the printer is still warming up! not reliable at all... This model in particular is an Epson LP-9400, but I plan to target the "configuration" in rather than the particular model.

Is this attainable at all using WMI? or the WMI layer lacks of updated info about the actual status? (Right now I'm querying the status using WMI)

Bigger
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  • If it's connected by Ethernet then it _is_ a network printer. Typically that means all that you can determine on the client machine is that the print job was successfully sent to the printer. – Carey Gregory Aug 28 '13 at 12:09
  • I found it's possible with PJL, but it's not working for my particular printer model/configuration, I wouldn't mind using that sort of direct communication with the printer if that's the way to go. Any ideas on a more universal way of getting the status even by directly talking to the printer? – Bigger Aug 29 '13 at 01:14
  • Directly talking to the printer is a bad idea. Although most printers follow standard protocols, there are a lot of them that don't. It seems the Epson LP-9400 is probably one of them. I did a quick look for documentation on it and found nothing useful. I think the first thing I would look for if I were you is user-level documentation explaining why it's acting as a print server and can you turn that off and have it behave as a local printer. – Carey Gregory Aug 29 '13 at 04:23
  • I've been trying several things Win32 apis, talking to the driver, and the more I try, the more I convince myself it's not possible... The very printer status webpage (located in the embedded http server IN the printer) reports itself as "printing or ready to print" at all times. Looks like the printer itself doesn't know what it's doing :/ – Bigger Aug 29 '13 at 07:02
  • The driver is unlikely to provide any useful information since it has little or no interaction with the printer once it has finished rendering the job. The port monitor handles the task of sending the rendered data to the printer. – Carey Gregory Aug 29 '13 at 14:27

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