MS-DOS Application Prints Incomplete Pages

 Last reviewed: April 4, 1997
Article 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, and 4.0
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server, versions 3.5, 3.51, and 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 ntdosap ntprint NTSrvWkst
Version : 3.1
Platform : WinNT

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Last reviewed: April 4, 1997
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