Windows printer printing blank pages D3/Win10

[Bruce Gover]

I know this subject has come up before by excuse this old timer. I go back to the days of General Automation, CIE Systems, etc. 

I was running D3/NT and was using PrintWizard to handle the new Windows network printers. I then upgraded to D3/Win7 about 3 years ago and my Brother HL-2170 (network) printers (3) were working without PrintWizard. I then purchased Brother MFC-2700DW a year ago and that worked. I only used that printer for a remote location for 2 weeks but now that I want to use it again it is now only prints out blank pages. The HL-2170 printers are still printing ok. I no longer have PrintWizard running to assist.

The MFC-2700DW works perfectly fine as a printer on the server but not via D3.

I have a feeling that my FORCED upgrade from Win7 to Win10 back in January may be the cause. Quite frankly, I was surprised that D3 worked properly after the upgrade to Win10. 

Is there any other solutions other than PrintWizard to address Window printer driver issues? I found PrintWizard to be a little complicated to set up and it is suggested that it runs on it's own server box. I am trying to keep things simple. 

Feel free to point me to any previous postings.

[Bob Rasmussen]

Print Wizard does NOT need to run on a separate server.

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[David Knight]

Hi Bruce,

I'm a d3/win app developer for 20+ years and have migrated my dev & released systems seamlessly across every d3 release from AP/OA!! The only time I had to do some 'work' [and it was a little] was in moving from R83 to AP. Now on d3v9; no new issues. Just better, and faster.

I currently have my dev system on W10/64 bit and deployed systems on W2018/64. All fine.

Now, in terms of your printer issue; a lot depends upon how you setup d3 to print. I always use NTPrint via coldstart and associate form queue[s]. The ONLY time I've had trouble printing is when the printer is a GDI printer. I've found that a generic HP Laserjet 4 PCI driver will work if the "better" or "more complex" manufacturers driver will not play nice. I also sometime had to alter the data type within the server's driver instance to RAW. But I never got blank pages.

What I did get was blank pages between jobs which I was never able to totally eradicate.

So now to Printwizard... My latest app is a true browser-based system built using designbais; and for certain sets of printed output going via the browser just was not on. I had to print 'centrally' and I did not want the hassles of setting up printers, NTprint etc. So I settled on Printwizard; which is fantastic. So, let me clear a few things up for you:

1. As Bob said Pritnwiz does not need a server of it's own. It happily co-exists on my W10/64 desktop dev system; as well as deployed W2018/64 systems

2. It is fast and does not consume much resource.

3. IMHO, it is true that the product is hard to get your head around [sorry Bob] as it is soo big and potentially complex. That said, Bob is great at support, and extremely patient and helpful. I probably use < 30% of it's abilities.

I hope that helps guide you onto the right path, no matter whether you wish to pursue direct d3 printing; or utilise Printwiz.

Cheers

[Bruce Gover]

What is NTPRINT? Not familiar with this and how it gets put into the coldstart. Do you have a link or can you explain?

I tried to see if I could change the printer driver to HP Laserjet 4 PCI but Win 10 was driving me up the wall. There seems to be 2 ways to access printer stuff, either go to PRINTERS (via search) and you we 'new' WIN10 stuff. Or, you can search for CONTROL PANEL and pull up the old Win7 control panel, select printer devices and see a different way to update printers. Either option, I did not figure it out.

I will explore PrintWizard again, hopefully something will 'click'. Does anybody have a write-up for D3 users? Since my PW was on a separate server before, I had to set up network printers on the D3 server to point to the PW box, that it the part that took me a while to figure out. It was working fine but after a while, I forgot the whole process on how to set it up. I would love to take advantage of PW form overlay since I am doing 'old school' of print out a blank form and putting into a printer and then another program will print just the field values. Not a big deal but it would be nice to have 1 printer where I can put in blank paper and to have it generate both the stock form and the required data.

Hopefully I can find some time to figure the best solution to my problem. I thought my problem was solved when my printer worked with D3/WIN7 (ie., the hardware solved the problem) but I now know that I still have a challenge.

By the way, I am just a USER now and the problem I am trying to solve is a day to day issue.

[Bob Rasmussen]

Bruce,

We can help you set up Print Wizard for your new environment. We do this
with a Webex shared desktop session. Contact me off-list to suggest a day,
time, and timezone.

Bob Rasmussen, r...@anzio.com

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017, Bruce Gover wrote:

> What is NTPRINT? Not familiar with this and how it gets put into the coldstart. Do you have a link or can you
> explain?
> I tried to see if I could change the printer driver to HP Laserjet 4 PCI but Win 10 was driving me up the wall.
> There seems to be 2 ways to access printer stuff, either go to PRINTERS (via search) and you we 'new' WIN10 stuff.
> Or, you can search for CONTROL PANEL and pull up the old Win7 control panel, select printer devices and see a
> different way to update printers. Either option, I did not figure it out.
>
> I will explore PrintWizard again, hopefully something will 'click'. Does anybody have a write-up for D3 users? Since
> my PW was on a separate server before, I had to set up network printers on the D3 server to point to the PW box,
> that it the part that took me a while to figure out. It was working fine but after a while, I forgot the whole
> process on how to set it up. I would love to take advantage of PW form overlay since I am doing 'old school' of
> print out a blank form and putting into a printer and then another program will print just the field values. Not a
> big deal but it would be nice to have 1 printer where I can put in blank paper and to have it generate both the
> stock form and the required data.
>
> Hopefully I can find some time to figure the best solution to my problem. I thought my problem was solved when my
> printer worked with D3/WIN7 (ie., the hardware solved the problem) but I now know that I still have a challenge.
>
> By the way, I am just a USER now and the problem I am trying to solve is a day to day issue.
>
> On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 3:43:25 PM UTC-8, David Knight wrote:

> Hi Bruce,I'm a d3/win app developer for 20+ years and have migrated my dev & released systems seamlessly

[David Knight]

Hi Bruce,

I'm sorry, I assumed too much. Perhaps if you are a user you'd do well to contract someone to assist you. Your app doesn't have a VAR?

Anyway, to answer your question about NTPrint; I mis-spoke [as we often do here as this is jargon and we assume others kinda have a default set of knowledge]. It is actually NTPrinter which is a parameter for the dev-make command. If run from the user-coldstart, it sets up an association between d3 and a specific instance of a printer as found within Windows. I assume you have access to a full version of d3, in which case you should also have their online, browser based manual?

If so, run that and within it search for "NTPrinter". A helpful page comes up, which also speaks of setting up using NTPrinter where the printer is a Windows GDI printer. That may solve all your problems.

That said, if your approach is to use Bob's excellent Printwiz routine with overlays; I can heartily recommend that. I mentioned I use it, and while the learning curve was a bit steep; the results work perfectly. My routine simply writes the text of the page "laid out" as if it were printing onto a pre-printed form. But that form is actually a pdf which Printwiz combines for me. My text is written to a folder Printwiz monitors, and off it goes.