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VMX Printer Bridge

The VMX Printer Bridge is a Windows background service that connects your receipt printer to VMX. It continuously checks for new print jobs from your VMX server and sends them to your local printer — no special router configuration required.

Installation

Download the Installer

  1. Go to VMX Admin → Printers, Print Queues tab
  2. Find the print queue you want to connect and click the Service link in the Download column
  3. A file named something like VMXPrinterBridge_Setup_Register_1.exe will download

One installer per printer, per computer

Each downloaded installer is pre-configured for a specific print queue. The installer shows you exactly which queue it's for before you click Install. Do not share or reuse installers — if another computer needs the bridge, download a fresh installer from VMX Admin.

Run the Installer

  1. Double-click the downloaded .exe
  2. The Ready to Install screen confirms which print queue and server this installer is for — verify it's correct before continuing
  3. Click Install — the service installs and starts automatically
  4. The Finish screen confirms the service is running

The installer requires administrator privileges. Windows may show a security warning ("Windows protected your PC") because the installer is not yet digitally signed — this is expected. Click More info → Run anyway to proceed.

How It Works

Once installed, the VMX Printer Bridge runs as a Windows background service called VMX Printer Bridge and starts automatically every time Windows boots. It:

  • Continuously checks your VMX server for new print jobs
  • Sends them directly to your configured printer
  • Restarts itself automatically if it ever stops unexpectedly
  • Requires no ongoing maintenance

The service connects outbound to your VMX server over HTTPS — no inbound firewall ports need to be opened.

Printer Support

The bridge supports network printers (via TCP/IP), printers installed locally on Windows (by name), PDF printing, and file share–based printers. Your VMX support contact will configure the correct connection type during setup.

Replacing or Moving a Computer

Swapping the computer at an existing register is a smaller job than setting one up from scratch — the register itself, its printer, drawer, scanner and card terminal all stay as they are. What has to be redone is everything that lived on the old Windows machine.

Work through these in order. Each step ends with something you can check, so you know it worked before moving on.

1. Uninstall the bridge from the old computer first

Go to Windows Settings → Apps, find VMX Printer Bridge, and uninstall it before setting up the new machine.

If both machines run the bridge for the same print queue, they compete for print jobs, which causes missed or duplicated receipts. If the old computer is already gone or won't boot, that's fine, just carry on and be sure to do step 6.

2. Set up register identification on the new computer

This one is easy to miss, because the register works well enough without it that nobody notices.

Register identification lives in the browser, not in VMX, so it does not travel with the swap. The new machine will ring sales and print receipts perfectly while VMX still doesn't recognise which lane it is. What stops working is quieter: house-charge signatures stop prompting on the card terminal, and receipts print differently.

Follow Setting Up a New Register → Register identification on the new machine. In short: Admin → Access, find this register's row, click Set up, and work through the window that opens.

Test: in Register → Register Configuration you should see a checkmark next to Register. In Admin → Access, that row's Last Use should have just updated.

Don't reuse another register's setup

The values belong to the one register you opened them from. Copying another lane's setup makes this machine identify as that lane, which puts its sales and cash drawer on the wrong register.

3. Install the printer driver on the new computer

The new machine won't recognise the receipt printer until its driver is installed, even though the printer is the same one that was working a minute ago on the old machine. Follow Setting Up a New Register → Receipt Printer, steps 1 to 3 — install the driver, print a Windows test page, and share the printer as receipt.

Finding the right driver download

Search results for printer drivers often land on a general consumer support site rather than the point-of-sale one, and the two carry different downloads. Start from the manufacturer's support page for your exact model number — it's printed on a label on the printer itself, not on the box — and look for the point-of-sale or receipt-printer driver rather than the first download offered.

Test: right-click the printer in Devices and Printers → Printer Properties → Print Test Page. If a test page prints, the driver is good.

4. Install the Printer Bridge on the new computer

Download a fresh installer from VMX Admin → Printers → Print Queues → Service for that register's queue, and run it. See Installation above.

Download a new installer — don't copy the old one

Each installer is pre-configured for one specific print queue. Copying the installer from another machine, or reusing an old one, points the new computer at the wrong queue.

Test: in VMX Admin → Printers → Bridges, the queue should show a row whose Host/OS is the new computer's name, with Last Connect refreshing every 30–60 seconds.

5. Test printing and the cash drawer

From the register, use Reprint Receipt on a recent sale — a receipt should print. Then click No Sale; the drawer should pop. (The drawer is kicked open by the receipt printer, so a working printer usually means a working drawer.)

6. Remove the old computer's bridge entry

This is the step people miss, and skipping it leaves a permanent false alarm.

After the swap, that print queue lists two rows on the Bridges tab — one per computer:

  • The new computer: current version, Last Connect a few seconds ago.
  • The old computer: an older version, Last Connect frozen at whenever you unplugged it.

Delete the old computer's row.

Delete the bridge row, not the print queue

Both rows belong to the same print queue, so deleting or trashing the queue would remove the working bridge along with the dead one. Delete only the row whose Host/OS is the old computer's name.

If you leave the old row in place, VMX keeps flagging it as a bridge that has stopped checking in, and shows the advice to go restart the service — on a computer that no longer exists. That warning never clears on its own, and over time it trains staff to ignore bridge warnings that are real.

Monitoring

In VMX Admin → Printers, on the Bridges tab, each connected bridge shows:

  • Last Connect — should refresh every 30–60 seconds if healthy
  • Host/OS — computer name, Windows version, and last reboot time
  • IP — the computer's WAN and LAN addresses
  • OS Printers — all printers installed on that Windows machine with their status
  • OS Spooler — jobs currently stuck in the Windows print spooler (normally empty), plus a Spooler Errors badge for recent print system errors on that computer

For the rest of the printer administration screens — defining print queues and tag printers, reading job statuses, reprinting, and clearing queues — see Printers (Admin).

Troubleshooting

The service keeps stopping or won't print

The bridge restarts itself automatically after most failures. If it keeps stopping:

  1. On the Windows machine, open Services (services.msc)
  2. Find VMX Printer Bridge and check its status
  3. If Stopped, click Start

The print queue has stuck jobs

Use the Flush Queue button on the Bridges tab of VMX Admin → Printers. This clears all jobs stuck in the Windows print spooler. The printer will be offline for a few seconds during the flush. See Printers (Admin) for details.

A bridge "has not checked in" from a computer we replaced

If the warning names a computer that is no longer in service, this is a leftover entry from the machine it replaced, not a fault on the working one. Confirm the queue also has a healthy row — current version, Last Connect a few seconds ago — and then delete the old computer's row. See Replacing or Moving a Computer → Remove the old computer's bridge entry.

Delete only that row. Both rows belong to the same print queue, so removing the queue would take the working bridge with it.

"This installer has not been configured"

The installer file is outdated or was corrupted during download. Download a fresh copy from VMX Admin.

Printer shows "Unknown" status

This is normal for some printer drivers that don't report status back to Windows. The bridge will still print correctly — Unknown just means the driver doesn't expose a status code.

Uninstalling

Go to Windows Settings → Apps, find VMX Printer Bridge, and uninstall. This stops the service, removes all VMX Printer Bridge files, and deregisters the Windows service cleanly.