Protext Technical Support
Printing fix for
Windows 95/98
Running
Protext under Windows XP
Running
Protext under Windows Vista
Printing fix for Windows 95/98
After printing a document an extra page is printed, either blank or
containing some meaningless text.
This can be fixed by turning off print spooling for DOS applications. Do this
as follows:
1. Open the printer from "My Computer"
2. Click on File and choose Properties
3. Click on Detail and choose Port Setting
4. Clear the Spool DOS check box
This may also speed up printing.
Note: This does not apply to (and is not needed for) Windows NT or Windows 2000.
Running
Protext under Windows XP
When Protext is run under Windows XP it fails with an error like this:
INTERRUPT 0DH, GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT
possible illegal address
error code = 0000
Note that the other applications (Config, Convert, Fsort) work fine.
The reason for this appears to be that the DOS emulation in Windows XP has changed in some way that is incompatible with the 32 bit memory extender that Protext uses to access extended memory. Optimists can hope that this may be fixed by an XP service pack, but I doubt that Microsoft will consider it a priority.
Fortunately, there is a way to use Protext under XP and that is to use the 16 bit version of Protext. This has all the same features but does not use extended memory. However this does not matter much now – any computer running Windows XP will have plenty of memory for the swap file and fast hard disks for virtual memory so the 16 bit Protext works well.
If you do not have the 16 bit version of Protext.exe you can download it here:
Download Protext.exe (16 bit version)
Be sure to rename the existing Protext.exe as Protext32.exe before extracting this, then you can try it again after installing any XP service pack.
Running
Protext under Windows Vista
The good news is that the above problem has been fixed and the 32 bit version of Protext works in Vista. The bad news is that it appears that Microsoft have dropped support for running an MS-DOS application in so-called 'full screen mode' (which was really just a taller window) and it is restricted to running in a 25 line window. If you have a fix for this, please let us know.
When you run Protext under Vista you will see a message saying that full screen mode is not supported and giving the options to Close or Ignore. Click on Ignore and Protext will run.
To stop this warning message appearing, locate Protext.exe in the location where it was installed. Right click and select Properties. Click the Screen tab and change the radio button 'Usage' from 'Full-screen' to 'Window'.
These are in Protext document format for downloading:
For more information about writing printer drivers, see Exfile 10, below.
The last three issues of Exfile magazine, full of Protext hints and tips.