Printer problems with Clipper and Win2000

[fbizzell]

I have a 5.2e clipper application that makes heavy use of dot matrix printer to print reports. It works fine under Windows 98 but on Windows 2000 machines there is a long delay before the printer starts printing on short reports. On long reports it sometimes will stop in the middle or near the end of the report for a long pause before finishing the job. Any ideas?

 

[Controlfrk]

I have recently solved this problem for a program I had written for my business. The person who wrote it no longer supports it and people here have been very helpful in showing me how to set it up to run in XP.

It was a little harder to get the printing portion working. After hours of internet searching I found a little $20 program online tha seems to have solved all my problems. I have tried most of the reports built into my program and it seems to handle all of them with no problems.

The program comes with a 15 day trial or 100 pages. This should be plenty of time to test it on your system. Good Luck. The link to the site is:

http://www.dos2usb.com/index.htm

 

[fbizzell]

Thanks. This may come in handy if I switch to USB printers but I am using Dot matrix printers with parallel printer port, not USB.

 

[JockMullin]

Hi, fbizzell

Have you tried configuring the printer to print direct rather than spooling? This sounds like spooler delay. Also be sure to issue a set printer to when the report is finished so it doesn't have to time out on the last page, but printing direct should fix both problems.

Unfort I don't have a W2K machine available, but it should be on the advanced tab in printer properties if memory serves.

Jock

 

[fbizzell]

I found the following function somewhere on this forum which solved my problem:

FUNCTION PRCOMMIT()
local cPrinter := set(24,"LPT3")
set(24,"LPT2")
set(24,"LPT1")
set(24,"" )
// restores the original printer-port!
set(24,cPrinter,.t.)
return nil


Issing the PRCOMMIT() after the print job did the trick. l It now prints immediately and does not pause during prinint.

I would like to thank the person who submitted it.