Adjust Your Printer Timeout Intended For Windows 98 Windows 95 If you've ever printed in Windows, your work has undoubtedly been interrupted with the little "Windows will Retry in 5 seconds" window that appears if your printer is not turned on, out of paper, or just warming up. The time that Windows waits before notifying you that the printer isn't ready is called the timeout. In Windows 3.x, the Timeout was easily changed to suit the user's printer and work habits, but this adjustment can be difficult to find in Windows 95 & 98. It can be terribly irritating to have to look at this retry window every 5 seconds. Here's how to do it: Double-click on the Printers icon in Control Panel, and click on the Details tab. For an unknown reason, the timeout for "not ready" is called Not Selected here. Set this value and the value below it to something more tolerable like 120 seconds. Note: This solution won't work in some situations, and the little box will still appear. This article has been recently supported by and featured on this Internet Webhosting Guide Written by: Annoyances.org Last updated: Friday, August 10, 2001 Care to discuss this article with other Windows users? Select your operating system here, and click Continue to post your question. - Choose your OS -Windows 7Windows Server 2008Windows VistaWindows Server 2003Windows XPWindows 2000Windows MeWindows 98Windows 95 Previous discussions about this article: (open a message to see applicable responses, if any) [Windows 98] Question about 'Adjust Your Printer Timeout' (raan summers: Monday, August 20, 2001) [Windows 98] Question about 'Adjust Your Printer Timeout' (Josh: Wednesday, October 31, 2001) [Windows 98] Question about 'Adjust Your Printer Timeout' (Steve Pamberg: Tuesday, June 18, 2002) [Windows 2000] Question about 'Adjust Your Printer Timeout' (Kumar Krishna: Monday, August 5, 2002) [Windows Vista] Question about 'Adjust Your Printer Timeout' (Charles Brewster: Tuesday, August 5, 2008) Return to "Improving Performance"