MS-DOS Application Prints Incomplete Pages

ID: Q101850

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT operating system, version 3.1
Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server, version 3.1
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5, 3.51, 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5, 3.51, 4.0

All MS-DOS application printing is done through the Windows NT spooler system. In order to know when to send a job to the spooler, there is a time-out on the printer port. Once something has been printed to the port, if this time-out passes with no more data presented to the port, the print job is sent to the spooler. On a slow computer running a complex calculation to produce the print job, it is possible that the time-out can expire during this calculation. This will cause the printout to appear over multiple pages instead of a complete page. To solve this problem, increase the time-out. Change the registry setting to the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\WOW\LPT_timeout

The default value is 15 seconds.

Additional query words: prodnt


Keywords          : kbprint ntprint ntdosap NTSrvWkst 
Version           : 3.1
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        :

Last Reviewed: January 13, 1999