Unattended Printing Stalling

[jmcauliffe]

This is a strange problem that ONLY happens occasionally.
1. Workstation running PCAnywhere v. 10.5.1 host
2. Windows 2000 network
3. McAffee virusscan running on workstation
4. Visual Foxpro 6.0 with service packs
5. Visual interface, but automatically operating by timed kickoff in unattended mode. (Not operating program in a non-visual server mode IOW.)
6. Default printer driver is Adobe PDF Writer 5.5

This problem ONLY occurs maybe once or twice a month, but when it does, here's what happens:
The jobstream manager starts the programs. They run, printing reports of one nature or another to PDF writer.
The VFP report print dialog box appears on screen, and it 'appears' to be starting to print the first page of the report, but does nothing. When the time-out checking program (a separate process) senses the program has not completed, it pages an operator, who checks on the job. When the operator logs on to the host and either presses a key or moves the mouse, the program 'wakes up' and resumes printing, with no further intervention. So something about the active window is waking up the programs, but this is so intermittant it's hard to troubleshoot. It must have something to do with PcAnywhere and VFP.
Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[mcoupal]

I suspect the computer's asleep in some way. Yeah, that would sound more plausible if it happened every day but that's my theory. I would recommend doing a few queries about 30 seconds before running the reports to help wake it up. Also, look into the MOUSE command to click on a safe part of the screen/form. You can also use the KEYBOARD command to send some keystrokes into a text box. Maybe one of these will consistently wake it up.