What happens to print jobs when the spooler is restarted

Question

_{Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:03 PM}

Hello. I have done some research and I am not able to find a definitive answer to my question. I am a sysadmin responsible for some thrity print servers, 15000 queues printing to around 5000 print devices. We print millions of jobs every month. Every now and again we have to restart the print spooler service ;)

My question is - particularly with Windows 2008 R2 sp1 - what happens to print jobs that are in the process of spooling from the client to our server or from our server to the print device when I stop and start the print spooler? Are they just lost and the client (human) has to resend them? Does that interrupt the user on the workstation with a prompt? Or is it just automatic - the client (workstation computer) spooler service just says hey i didnt get to send all that - here it is again - or the print device says hey I didnt get that - please resend - or the server says hey i didnt get to send all that - here it is again? I understand if the job is already spooled to the server it will remain in the spooler/print folder and begin printing once the spooler service restarts - but that brings up another question, do jobs restart from where they left off when the spooler service stopped, or do they start over at the beginning?

Unfortunately it is very difficult for me to actually physically see the printed output from the print device as we are nowhere near the print devices - so testing this accurately would be a challenge. In addition, I have a list as long as my arm of things I have to do before figuring this out and no one else is curious or cares much to be quite honest, so there is little support for setting up a test scenario in our lab. Besides, we have no print devices to print to...

Anyhow, just wondering and hoping that someone has already done all the testing required.

Thanks.

All replies (2)

_{Thursday, September 6, 2012 12:56 PM ✅Answered}

Someone could correct me;

1 - If the printjob was not sent at 100% to the printserver. The client receive a printing error and the job will be in the client spooler, and will be tried later on.

2 - If the printjob was spooled at 100% to the printserver, but was not handled at 100% by the printer. The spooler re-buffer the .spl, .shd and resend it.

3 - If the printjob was spooled to the printserver and was sent at 100% to the printer, then the document will continue printing.

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_{Thursday, September 6, 2012 5:07 PM}

Good answer.  A couple of add on points.

1.  The error on the client comes typically gets bubbled up through the application.  This can be "There was an error printing...." or "Invalid Handle", or some generic message from the application. 

2.  I personally like to use reschedule the print job, but that's just me, it goes to the print device in the end.

3. If the driver supports true end of job and the end of job notification has not been received from the print device, the job can be rescheduled since the data was not deleted by the spooler.

Alan Morris Windows Printing Team