i Customer has 2 old win98 MACHINES networked to use an old dos based invoice and purchasing package. only networked to use this program. they have 2 printers attached to each machine which are not networked.
installed a Nec dual layer dvd writer in the old p111 500 machine for them so they could use ghost to create an image of their system. also added some extra memory to speed the process up and then uninstalled an out of date version of norton 2003 as they no longer use the internet.
reconected the system but now find that the panasonic dot matrix printer will no longer print from the dos based program when it is LAUNCHED from within win98. the printer prints fine in dos and also prints ok in win98 but not in dos when win98 is running in the background. company that supplied the software has looked at the machine but are struggling to sort out the program, their MAIN expert is ill at the moment.
general opinion seems to be that win98 is preventing the printer from working in dos.
have tried disabling various options in bios to prevent all non required devices loading. have checked that there are no irq conflicts in win98. have compared the settings for the machine that works downstairs and compared them to the non-working machine upstairs, adjusting where necessary but all to no avail. have uninstalled all the printers from win98, heve reinstalled the panasonic 1695 drivers in win98. have looked at and tried various settings for port settings and spool settings in printer settings.
have even removed the dvd writer from the system and replaced with original cd rom.
all to no avail


any help most appreciated

cheers
darrellwSo it used to work, but changes were made and now ALL of those changes have been undone and it doesn't work?

Try this. In windows explorer locate the DOS program. Right click and select properties. Click the program tab. Click the advanced button. Check the box "prevent MSDOS programs from detecting windows". Click apply. See if the program will now print.

Note: If necessary, you can Select DOS MODE and create a config.sys and autoexec.bat to be run when entering DOS mode.