what manages the print queue?

[Dai]

I find myself with another little detail that puzzles me.
Take a hypothetical scenario where you have a fileserver serving several workgroup PCs. You have a network printer installed to this fileserver as shared so it's accessible to all the workgroup.

In a situation where more than one workstation is sending to that printer then print jobs will be queued.

My question is where is that queue managed. Is it controlled by the spool service on the fileserver or by the actual print server in the printer?

[Raistlin]

It will be managed by the spool service on the server.

[Halcyon]

If you have a problem with the printing or need to restart the print spooler you can go to run and then type services.msc
You can then browse to print spooler and restart it.

[Dai]

Thanks guys. That was how I suspected that it worked but needed confirmation.

[greencreeper]

Originally Posted by Rob M

It will be managed by the spool service on the server.

Sort of - the spool service on the PC takes the job from the application, and sends it on its way to the fileserver, which then manages the printing of the job BUT the job may queue locally if something is wrong with the fileserver, such as it being offline. Once the fileserver is able to receive jobs again, the local spool service should send them on.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Rob M

It will be managed by the spool service on the server.

In a P2P network it can be set to render on either, though. It's usually the server - ie the machine the printer resides on.