XCLN: Printing Blank Page with Exchange Client for Windows 3.x

• Microsoft Exchange Windows 3.x client, versions 4.0 and 5.0

SYMPTOMS

When you print from a Microsoft Exchange client for Windows 3.x to an HP III series printer or an HP DeskJet 820Cse, an extra sheet will be ejected. Nothing will be printed on this sheet.

CAUSE

This is due to the way that the printer driver deals with low memory situations. Microsoft Exchange attempts to do printing on Win16 using banding. This is not always the case and these printers exhibit this. When we try to print to these printers, the first band it gives is a text-only band covering the entire page. Each band after this will be a graphics only band covering part of the page. Because we only ask for graphics bands, we ignore the text-only band and just use the graphics bands. Since the HP driver will ignore text primitives in a graphics only band, you only see the graphics primitives when you print.

WORKAROUND

There are several possible workarounds to this issue.

• Try to add the following setting to the options section of the Exchng.ini file:

        UsePrintBanding=0
  

  If the problem persists, add more memory if the computer has 8-megabytes (MB) or less,

• If every font in your message is a TrueType font, you can select the Print TrueType as graphics checkbox (open the File menu, click Print, click the Setup button, and click the Options button). This will print your message correctly but it will not print any fonts that are not TrueType,

• If the HP printer has PostScript, you can use it as the Postscript driver does not exhibit this behavior.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in versions 4.0, of Microsoft Exchange. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.