Corel Draw does not support my Epilog laser under Windows 7!!! Help!

Jeanyes said:

Personally, I have no idea who is to "blame" for this.  I'm not a computer programmer so I have no expertise in this area.  All I know is that I love Corel Draw, I love my Epilog Laser, and I also love my new computer running Windows 7... I'd like to be able to use all three of these together. 

Contact Epilog to make sure they have the drivers to satisfy your upgrade desires.

FosterCoburn said:

I won't say who is wrong in this battle.

Looks like another case of upgrade 1, upgrade 2, and forget the other. If Epilog did ot provide you with an independently operable program and chose to piggyback then they are to blame. Contact them to make sure your product is supported in the new environments.

-John

I've done a bit more testing on this.  I wanted to make sure that it wasn't only raster-based programs that were printing correctly... Adobe Illustrator does work with my laser under Windows 7 for both vector and raster images.  So again, I can see why Epilog is claiming it's a Corel Draw issue.

But at the same time I do agree with you guys...  I have no problems with Corel draw when printing to my Canon ipf5100 or my HP LaserJet 5100.  Both Canon and HP have figured out a way to write their drivers so that they work in Corel Draw.  Why can't Epilog?

At the end of the day I think it's Epilog that is going to need to write new drivers.  I'd guess that  close to 100% of their customers use Corel Draw.  What percent of Corel Draw users have Epilog lasers?  Probably less than 1%?   There's going to be very little incentive for Corel Draw here.

Hi,

Epilog is claiming that Corel Draw (even the latest x5 version) does not fully support 64-bit drivers.

This is baloney. As far as printing is concerned applications do not care what driver, 32 or 64bit, they use. Epilog rep does not know what he is talking about. Particular problem that we see quite often with "niche" printer manufacturers is that their developers simply do not know how to write printer drivers properly, something that HP, Canon, Epson and other manufacturers has figured long time ago. However in most cases they recognize the problem and are not that arrogant, we worked with many manufacturers to suggest them a properly working solution. Perhaps you can suggest this next time you talk to Epilog.

Could you elaborate on what exactly problem you are having with Epilog laser and X5? Did you try to print from X4 on the same system? Did you try to use "Print as bitmap:" option on X5 print dialog? This is to test whether data stream X5 sends to the printer is too complex for driver to handle. X5 GM included a fix to provide better fidelity for complex effects ( rotated transparencies, masked and clipped images ) which made our print data stream rather complex, we encountedred few situations when some driers were failing to print all objects, or any objects at all. Going with "Print as bitmap:" ( and sometimes lowering document's rendering resolution ) would resolve this problem in GM, the fix has been tuned in X5 SP1 to just work even on less capable printers.

Gennady

Ok, here's more info and answers to your questions:

Yes, I have tried x4 on the same system.  Does not work either.

Per your request, I did just go and try "Print as Bitmap" on x5 and no dice there either.

Here's exactly what happens on the Windows 7 machine:

The first time I try to print, it does not produce any errors.  The job simply never shows up on the Epilog laser.  There are no errors, the laser simply acts like it has not received a job.

If I then try to print again then a dialog box pops up saying "Unable to access printer driver.  Try removing and reinstalling this printer driver."  All I can do at that point is click "OK" The same box pops up another 6 or 7 times before finally displaying another dialog box "Internal application error."  Again. All I can do is click "Ok" at which point I am then returned to the normal print dialog box.

The tech at Epilog did mention a problem with larger files.  But my problem is with ALL files.  Even if I create a new 300dpi document with a simple 1" circle.  Nothing at all makes it to the laser, not even an error message or scrambled document. 

I do want to restate that my older machine is running Windows Vista 64bit and has no problems at all.  I even went to another 64bit Vista machine that's in my office (one that is normally not used for anything else except a 3d render farm) and installed the Epilog drivers along with corel draw x5 - everything worked perfectly again...  So it seems to be only Windows 7 that the Epilog drivers have a problem with.

As per the error message, I did of course try uninstalling and reinstalling the epilog print drivers.  I even went back and tried older beta drivers they have posted on their site hoping to get lucky.  

If I can provide any more details that may be helpful please let me know.