Slow printing when using alternate shell

[Berni]

Hello,

I am quite desperate because I have to build a "closed system", that is,
nobody may be able to easily delete files or change configuration.
Therefore I wrote my own little shell
("HKLM\...\WindowsNT\Winlogon\shell=xxx") which does nothing but
starting some programs and then waits until they have been closed.

The effect is that if I start notepad.exe and print a text like "TEST",
printing takes 5 sec after I pressed OK button on the printer dialog. In
case I use "explorer.exe" as the windows shell,
it will only take less than 1 sec. There is no difference in case I
print eg. six times consecutively. Each time the print dialog shows up
it will again 5 secs before printing starts.

I already listet up all the .DLLs explorer.exe uses and loaded them
using "LoadLibrary". I opened the printer myself and kept the printer
handle and printer spooler open but even this did not speed up printing.
As far as I can see, Windows XP does not load any further DLL while
notepad is printing but even this did not lead to an acceleration.

When using Windows 2000 everything works 100%, but under Windows XP it
does not work. I do not get rid of the delay.

I even tested some free shells "liteshell" etc, they all have the same
problem. Printing is much slower than using "explorer.exe" as the shell.

It doesn't matter which printer I choose. I tested nearly 10 windows
printer drivers (laser,ink and even needle printers).

Does anybody have an idea on that? How can I print fast without using
explorer.exe as the shell?

Thank you at least for reading.
Berni.

[Christian Kaiser]

Create a dummy window of the "PrintTray_Notify_WndClass" class and check
whether it is faster.

I read this once:

// (from the Newsgroup microsoft.public.win32.programmer.gdi)
// running in an environment without Explorer, WINSPOOL will take 2
seconds for each ENDDOC() as it notifies
// this window about a change, and the window does only exist is EXPLORER
is present. According to someone
// in the newsgroup, WINSPOOL tries 20 times with a timeout of 100ms. Thus
let's make sure such a window is present!
_hWndPrinterNtfyTraySimulation = CreateWindow(
TEXT("PrintTray_Notify_WndClass"),
TEXT(""),
WS_POPUP,
0,0,10,10,
NULL,
NULL,
hInstance,
NULL);

Christian

"Berni" <donot...@fakeaddress.com> wrote in message
news:uX6PA0f7...@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

[Berni]

Christian Kaiser schrieb:

Thanks Christian,

I will try it immediately and inform you about any progress.

Thanks again!

[Berni]

Berni schrieb:

It worked 100% when I tried your suggestion... Thank you very much!!!!!!!!!

for (DWORD i=1;i<1001;i++)
{
printf ("Thanks Christian");
}