All of a sudden I am unable to print from a DOS program or
from command prompt.
Colette,
Here's my standard reply when I see messages relating to W2KSP3/4 and
printing from DOS apps. It may apply to your situation.
I have also found that, even though things may appear to "have happened
all of a sudden", that's rarely the case. It may be after a security
patch was applied, or loading in a Service Pack, or switching from FAT32
to NTFS, whatever. (On the other hand, I'm working my way through
restoring a client's computer that had it's video settings majorly
corrupted - happened all of a sudden.)
=================
Did you perchance install Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or 4? I've been
hearing that Windows 2000 loses the ability to render plain text to the
special printing mode (GDI) that Windows uses after SP3/4 is installed
(especially SP4).
You may soon be referenced to Bruce Sanderson's most excellent article
describing the process to redirect LPT or PRN output to a shared printer
(regardless how it is connected). His article explains better the same
concepts you may have researched in MS Knowledgebase articles.
Sanderson's article is fine as far as it goes.
I'm assuming that you know for a fact whether or not your printer is
what are coming to be known as "Win-Printers," as brain-dead as are "Win-
Modems." Win-printers cannot accept plain text ASCII.
Note - Win98 will re-render plain ASCII text into a form required by the
regular Windows print subsystem. However, If you are running Win2K or XP,
those operating systems are unwilling to re-render ASCII output to the
inate methodologies of the printing subsystem. In other words, unless the
printer can understand a plain text data stream, you will need a utility
to give Windows what it needs.
If they are *not* Win-Printers, then we can look elsewhere.
If they are Win-Printers, and such as I mentioned before, Win2K(SP3+) and
WinXP will require a small, neat, and inexpensive utility to capture the
ASCII output and present it in a form compatible to the operating
system's print subsystem. I recommend DOSPrn <
http://www.dosprn.com>.
There are others.
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I have also annotated one instance where restarting the spooler service
gets these jobs to print. Maybe for awhile and maybe not at all.
Brian Smither
Smither Consulting
