>When I want to make some printing works I need to check whether the printer is ready or not. When I turn the printer on and then off, printstatus() returns the same value (.T.). What is really happening?

You're talking to the Windows spooler and not the port itself. PRINTSTATUS() doesn't know trhew condition of the port directly, only what is reported by the spooler, and the spooler won't report the error until you try to write at least one character tot he print port. IOW, with Windows, PRINTSTATUS() doesn't work - in fact, even in FPDOS in some situations, when running under NT or Win9x, with the default printer handled by the Windows Spooler, you can't test the port directly.