Printer debug routine

Updated: 11/10/2017 by Computer Hope

If you are encountering issues with your printer, using the below debug command helps you discover what issues you are encountering.

Note

With modern USB (Universal Serial Bus) printers, this debug routine no longer works and should only be used when troubleshooting older computer printers. See, How to troubleshoot printer issues.

  1. Type debug at the MS-DOS prompt.
  2. At the - (hyphen) type in i379:

Anything less than eight for the second digit means printer error, first letter should be D, otherwise you'll get an error with the printer.

1 - 0001 9 - 1001 2 - 0010 A - 1010 3 - 0011 B - 1011 4 - 0100 C - 1100 5 - 0101 D - 1101 6 - 0110 E - 1110 7 - 0111 F - 1111

Example

d = 1101 = (1)Selected (1)No paper error (0)Printer Acknowledged (1)Not busy
Tip

To get out of the debug mode, hit "q" to quit.