14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has informed that Windows 7 customers with Bluetooth printers could come across an issue with the platform when a print job is in progress.
According to the software giant, users reported issues in which their Windows 7 machines would be affected by a black screen of death when they would print via a Bluetooth printer.
The Redmond company has identified the problem and revealed that it’s related to the Windows 7 computer shutting down or going into Sleep mode while the printing job is still in progress.
“Consider the following scenario: you have a computer that is running Windows 7 and that has Bluetooth capability; you pair the computer to a Bluetooth printer; you send a print job to the Bluetooth printer; you put the computer to sleep while the print job is still active,” the company said.
“In this scenario, Windows stops responding. Additionally, the print job stops,” Microsoft explained.
At this point in time the software giant is not offering a fix for this problem, nor is the company indicating that an update is coming to resolve the glitch.
And the fact of the matter is that the matter at hand is not necessarily a bug as much as a lack of functionality.
“The Bluetooth printer port driver in Windows 7 does not support power management and causes the system to hang when the port is active during shutdown,” Microsoft explained.
Microsoft is advising users coming across this issue to simply force restart their Windows 7 computers.
Of course, in order to prevent this from happening again, customers need to make sure that the Windows 7 PC doesn’t go to sleep when they’re printing using a Bluetooth printer.
While it’s certainly possible that the software giant will deal with the issue in the future, there’s no telling how much it will take until power management support is added to the Bluetooth printer port driver in Windows 7.