Recipe 3.15. Resolving Printer Timed-Out and Not Ready Problems

Problem

You experience no printing, or slow or failed/timed-out printing symptoms from DOS programs under Windows XP. Printer output is garbled or incomplete.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Click Start, then select Printers and Faxes.

2. Right-click the icon for your printer, then select Properties.

3. Select the Ports tab.

4. If your printer is connected to your PC through an LPT port, highlight the port and click the Configure Port... button. You cannot change the configuration of USB or network ports.

5. In the Configure LPT Port dialog you will see a default Transmission Retry with a value of 90 seconds. Change this value to 15, then click OK.

Discussion

Because Windows isn't really intended to support DOS and DOS hardware devices, the print spooler and HAL drivers may send data prematurely to the printer driver or wait too long to send data to an LPT-port-connected printer from a DOS program, and then time out before the printer acknowledges it is ready to or has accepted data. Setting a shorter timeout period for the LPT port time out forces the print spooler driver to send data sooner and get the printer to start producing the desired output.

See Also

Broader coverage of DOS and Windows printing problems can be found at http://www.superflow.com/support/support-dynosoft-prntprobs.htm.