Windows

Hello...

Your printer is a dot matrix printer. It excels at printing plain ASCII text. But, Windows generally prints graphics. Even text is printed as graphics because the fonts are often known to Windows but not the printer itself.

I suspect that when you print, the printer driver and spooler are creating large page images in memory and then sending the bits to the printer. This is why your CPU usage goes to 100%. Your computer is doing a lot of work to print those pages.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
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1. Since you're using a dot matrix printer, you may want to print just plain ASCII text instead of Windows graphics. This is application-specific however. If you could get your application to print plain ASCII text to your printer, CPU usage should be minimal and print speed should be very high vs. what you're probably observing now trying to print graphics on a 24-pin dot matrix printer.

2. You may get some reduction in CPU usage if you turn spooling off. Choose "Print directly to printer" on the "Advanced" tab of the "Properties" dialog for the printer.

Does this help?

-----Steve Jackson

CEO/CSA
Software Corporation (Softcorp)
http://www.softcorp.us/probono
Advanced pro bono tools and utilities free for personal use

Hi

Are you also experiencing degredation of system performance? If so, what else are you trying to do when this occurs? There may be more steps you can take to minimise CPU usage

Go into Printer property, and set the printer to spool the document.