custom built program Dbase printing problem

[lan101]

Hello,

I did some work for a small company in the area, and there is a problem that I am not sure how to fix. There is a printer and a plotter both hooked to one pc running windows xp professional. They are both shared on the network and both work fine.

In this custom program, ln the main computer that both the printer and plotter are hooked to...it works great!! On another computer on the network, this dbase program will only print to the plotter. We need it to go to the other printer.

I spoke with the guy that made the program, and he told me he has had a problem with this for a long time. He told me he would change names of printers every morning and blah blah and it would work.

To me, this just does not seem feasible for someone at this company to have to go through that headache every single morning.

Anyone know of a way to do anything about this. Basically this Dbase program is pointing to the wrong printer and I am not sure if I need to do something to the programming or change something in regedit??

Any help or things to try is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Landon

 

[computerdoc]

Do you have access to the code that he is using? If so, can you display the print statement?

Where does he rename the printers? Does he do it on the failing workstation?

 

[lan101]

I do not have access to the code I do not believe.

He said he changed the printer names on the computer they are shared on.

He said he just put a -1 behind all the printers YOU DO NOT!! want it to print to and then it would go to the right one.

Basically doing this in the control panel under printers and faxes and changing the name of the printer.

It didn't work for me, then it just didn't print.

More than likely it's probably something in the code itself is what I was thinking, but I guess it worked correctly when there was just one printer.

Later on they added the plotter and now it only wants to print to the plotter and if you turn that off or change the name of it, it just simply won't print.

 

[computerdoc]

This should really be changed in the program.

In any case, the following might help.

The syntax for printing in dbase is

SET PRINTER TO \\MyServer\MyPrinter=LPT1 && associate the network printer with a port or spooler
REPORT FORM MyReport TO PRINT && create a print job
SET PRINTER TO && Signals the queue this job complete

Dbase expects to print on LPT1

Go into Control Panel on the workstation and select 'printers and fax' option. Then select the printer that you want, set it to default and select properties. Under the properties menu select 'ports' . Next select the box down at the bottom left that says ' enable pooling', now go up and select 'LPT1'. Now your system should send all output to LPT1 which although is not configured with a printer will pool the output to your default printer on the serial port.

You should be able to do this with simple batch files so that you run one to pick the printer and the other to pick the plotter.

Microsoft provides a way to install printers using batch files. Type:


RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /?

 

[lan101]

Ok thanks for the information.

I wonder if the enable pooling will make it work on the networked computer

The plotter is hooked to the LTP1 and the other printer is USB

On the machine that both of these are hooked to, The Dbase program PRINTS on the USB printer how it's suppose to...just on the networked computer it points to the LTP1 (plotter) which is not what we want.



I haven't done too much with batch files, just some basic stuff. I downloaded a guide about it though from Microsoft that seems to be pretty good info for the future as well.

 

[ComputerRepairStpete]

I think no one can help you except the person who have developed this program, what you can do is ask for the source code from your programmer and get it done from someone else or you can also tell your programmer to do it by giving him some money.