Go ahead and try the hosts file edit. It won't hurt anything, but may not help. You can tell what version of btrieve you are by going to the server console & typing:
modules b*.*
it will return the version of the btrieve.nlm you have. I dearly hope it is at least 6.15. Version 6.0 was dead in the water by at least 1994. I have no docs left on it anymore.
I did find my old brtieve 6.15 installation and operation manual, though. Look for yours: it is a bound paperback around 200 pages with light green and purple graphics on it. It explains the butil procedure in there. Basically, you run the butil from an attached workstation to the server to be sure you have proper connectivity. It will return information to you about the file you are querying including indexes, number of records, field lengths, etc. I just found a pdf for the manual as well if you want it via ftp.
There are various utilities you can use to see what btrieve components are loaded on the workstation when you are running an app. Macola distributed qedllmgr, which you may find in your macola directory or be able to download from somewhere. I have a copy, but you'd need to give me an ftp site or something to transfer it. There is another called "modules" that I believe I got from crystal's website. I have a copy I can ftp to you if you give me a site. Novell had one, too, as I recall that may be downloadable from their website.
All that said, there must be some variance between your workstations that work and the one that doesn't, and those dll monitoring tools might point to which ones are the problem. There may be a couple of btrieve components extra or missing that are taking up just enough RAM on the workstation that it will bomb out on the printing. Order Entry was always the place that our DOS machines or early windows machines would choke becuae of the number of files open at once. We used to have to set a files= in the config.sys and add extra parameters to use extended memory in the final days of using that DOS product. Also try pervasive's website to see if the PSA (pervasive system analyzer) will search for old components. I have a copy of it, too, if you don't and want me to ftp.
Another thought: we had problems with the newer faster machines printing to legacy printers. The CPU would push the print data out faster than the printer could respond. Is this dot matrix attached to the server or a workstation? You should be sure that the server or workstation is processing the output only as fast as the printer can handle it. There is a setting on the workstation printer where you can tell it to start printing after the last page is spooled which helps with long reports and "think and print" reports like pick tickets that are doing file updates and selecting based on criteria as they go.
When you say it was working fine until recently, was it fine on this workstation as well? If so, what changed? Did you install new software? Automatic windows updates?
You should probably have a bti.ini on your local workstation even if you are on btrieve 6.15 (can't remember honestly), I think. The bti.ini would tell the workstation to use ipx/spx protocol to send requests to the server even in DOS. If you have some other legacy apps running on this workstation, you may have newer or older btrieve components than what you should.
Other than that, Goldstar-sw.com has been a btrieve partner forever and they still offer support and sales of 6.15 up, support for older products, but I'm sure they would charge. They do have a pretty extensive forum that you can search for free. Maybe someone else has a similar problem with a legacy DOS app. Nelson Software Solutions also has btrieve tools and forum support, I believe (
Good luck to you. Time to move off that BSOD. Your problems will only get worse. If they won't buy an upgrade for macola windows, maybe it's time to look at quick books or peachtree in a box? You're lucky the server is still running. I haven't had a client on novell 3.11 since 1995. Isn't it amazing, though, how novell just ran and ran and ran? If you get 5 years out of a server today you've already been on borrowed time.
