Printing from a DOS program under XP??

Slime101

Slime101

Slime101

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We have a major piece of software which runs from a dos window within windows, attached to the computer we have label printers.

Under windows 3.11 (yes we still use it) the software prints straight to the label printer.

Under XP there is a delay, this is approx 30 seconds which means you can potentially be half way through the next order before the label has come out for the last one, a sure way of screwing up and getting muddled. Apparently this is because the software was written pre-printer drivers and it is this that causes the slow down under XP.

Does anyone know of a way we can speed this up to make it print instantly under XP as well as under Win 3.11 and hence get rid of the extra machines we have to use??
 
Some older DOS apps used to print using IRQ captures via IRQ5. They were a pain in the ass if you tried to move to things like Novell and LPT port redirection.

There were some tricks on redirecting the same port but ensuring they used polling rather than IRQ requests. Be buggered if I can remember what they were though, was such a long time ago.

Will have a look back through my stuff see if I can find anything.

On a site a couple of years ago - a theatre - I ended up having printers configured to dump to a file and then wrote some VB to monitor a directory and then print. It was the only way I could get them to work reliably over a re-directed network.

Funny, you forget how hard things used to be :eek:
 
The label printers are directly connected through LPT ports i believe.

I was told the issue is with drivers being needed under XP but not under 3.11
 
Slime101 said:
We have a major piece of software which runs from a dos window within windows, attached to the computer we have label printers.

Under windows 3.11 (yes we still use it) the software prints straight to the label printer.

Under XP there is a delay, this is approx 30 seconds which means you can potentially be half way through the next order before the label has come out for the last one, a sure way of screwing up and getting muddled. Apparently this is because the software was written pre-printer drivers and it is this that causes the slow down under XP.

Does anyone know of a way we can speed this up to make it print instantly under XP as well as under Win 3.11 and hence get rid of the extra machines we have to use??
Click to expand...

Tried the following?:

In prompt:

net use LPT1 \\server\share\printername /PERSISTENT:YES

At my work we have a similar accounting program that is archaic and requires to be told which printer as all DOS programs assume LPT1 is the default printer port, iirc.

You probably have done this and it won't help but it's worth a try if not! As it only captures the printer port in DOS and tells it the share of the computer, which is quite basic.

If not I guess it is the print drivers that XP has for the machine. Is there anyway you can run a compatibility mode on the program?
 
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Is that command line somthing that is run once, or is it at every startup??

I will give it a go as long as i dont do any permenant damage it may, or may not, solve our problems!
 
Slime101 said:
So how do i establish the exact details for the \\server\share\printername ???

(Sorry, hardware i mostly understand, software i just use!)
Click to expand...

Well I assume the printer is connected to a server in your network, in which case you would select this I think.

For example if your print server was called lolcats1 you might connect to \\lolcats1\printers\printername

I guess you can simply browse to lolcats1 via start > run > \\lolcats1 to see what the path structure is
 
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