Odd Characters in Prinout/Print Preview or Incorrect Redraw

Last reviewed: September 16, 1996
Article ID: Q121343
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Office for Windows, version 4.3

SYMPTOMS

When you complete Microsoft Office Setup, you may experience the following printing problems:

  • Strange characters appear in your document when you print it or display it in print preview.

    -or-

  • Your screen is not redrawn correctly when you exit print preview.

CAUSE

When you install Microsoft Office, updated versions of the UNIDRV.DLL and UNIDRV.HLP files are installed to your Windows System subdirectory.

The updated UNIDRV.DLL driver in a Windows 3.1 environment may cause unexpected behavior when you use it with older versions of installed printer drivers.

To determine whether UNIDRV.DLL has been updated, check the file size:

  • Size of updated UNIDRV.DLL 128432K (shipped with Office 4.3)
  • Size of the earlier UNIDRV.DLL 119296K (shipped with Windows 3.1)

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, install an updated printer driver, or decompress the earlier versions of the UNIDRV.DL_ and UNIDRV.HL_ files from the appropriate Windows 3.1 Setup disks.

To decompress the earlier versions of the UNIDRV.DLL and UNIDRV.HLP files, do the following:

  1. Quit Windows.

  2. Insert the appropriate Windows 3.1 Setup disk in your floppy disk drive.

  3. Change to the DOS directory and type the following

         expand <drive>\unidrv.dl_ <path>\unidrv.dll
         expand <drive>\unidrv.hl_ <path>\unidrv.hlp
    

    where <drive> is the location of the Windows setup disk, and <path> is the location of your Windows System subdirectory. For example if the disk is in drive a, and the path to your Windows System subdirectory is c:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, you would type:

         expand a:\unidrv.dl_ c:\windows\system\unidrv.dll
         expand a:\unidrv.hl_ c:\windows\system\unidrv.hlp
    

The files will be decompressed.

  1. Restart Windows.


KBCategory: kbsetup kbprint
KBSubcategory:

Additional reference words: Office 4.00 4.20 4.30 print preview corrupt




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Last reviewed: September 16, 1996
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