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Problem with Printer Controller Extender and Some Drivers

Keywords: 	   Printer Controller Extender	Drivers

Question:

I am busy creating a little utility that will allow users to see a list of all printers per location and then install the correct version of the driver with all the correct settings. I could do the installation bit previously, and when I read about the new extender and saw what it is supposed to do, i was obviously pleased. Problem is that I cannot change the printer attributes to what I want.

Basically I am trying to use the pSetPrtAttrib command to change the default paper size of a printer (to A4), configure the duplex unit, set the default tray etcetera. It gives a return code 1 which indicates that everything worked OK, but when I go to the printer driver, it still has the old settings. Then I went on and changed the settings in the driver manually and used pSetAttrib to change the settings back to the default settings, and that worked fine.

Just one additional thing - when I query the printer settings after I atempted to change the paper size from Letter to A4, and I do a pGetPrtAttrib for the paper size, I get a code of -22476 returned

Any ideas?

Answer:

Make sure the parameters are correct. Set it manually the way you want, then do a pGetPrtAttrib on each of the attributes you want to change, and use those values for pSetPrtAttrib. The values may vary from one printer driver to another.

Question (cont'd):

Ok - I have something more that might help. I have tested with an IBM 4039 16 Driver as well as with HP Laserjet drivers. It works fine with those drivers. The drivers I have experienced a problem with is the newer generation PCL drivers from IBM. What I found further is that if I go in manually to change the printersīs settings in the driver, and afterwards try change it with the pSetPrtAttrib command, it works 100%.

So in brief again -

    Utility installs driver, tries to do settings
  1. Comes back with return code 1
  2. Check settings - nothing changed
  3. Do pGetPrtAttrib, gives me a minus value
  4. Go to driver manually change settings to anything else
  5. Do pSetAttrib
  6. Changes take place without a problem.
  7. pGetPrtAttrib returns the correct value.
I hope that will help some. Would it help if I e-mail a copy of the drivers on to you?

Answer:

I'm not sure. It seems that some particular print driver wants to be opened from the Printers applet to do some special initialization before it works properly.

Is that what you see? After installing the printer driver you *have* to open the printer applet only once, and then after that everything works fine?

You could try to run the printer applet and then close it and see if that is sufficient to make it happy. Should be simple to do in a script.


Article ID:   W12548
Filename:   Prob with Printer Extender and Some Drivers.txt
File Created: 1999:05:21:08:45:32
Last Updated: 1999:05:21:08:45:32