Pausing Print Jobs

[dekken]

HI,

Does anyone know how to automatically pause a print job when it is sent to a win2k pro box's print spool? If this is not possible through admin. applications as it would be under win2k server does anyone have information regarding the programming of this task? Thanks in advance.

-Joshua Cowhig

 

[pbxman]

I've never heard of a way to automatically do it, but Sysinternals has a neat free tool that is like NT's SC utility. It will allow you to remotely or programatically start, stop, pause a service remotely. You could apply this to the spooler depending on the conditions you need to meet.

Check it out:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/psservice.shtml

In case you haven't already - you really should post this to a programming/developer forum as well in case someone has done this successfully with VB or something.

Hope this helps some.
Pbxman
Systems Administrator

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful.

 

[dekken]

Thanks Pbxman for the info. Although I am not sure its what I need, I will look into the psservice.

Let me be a bit more detailed. I work for a moderately sized library, which is trying to incorporate a basic central printing system for patrons. In this environment it is not unusual for someone unfamiliar with computers to press the print button 5-30 times before asking for staff help. This coupled with the general computer illiteracy of the staff would yield the pausing of the print spool troublesome because when activated again print jobs would be allowed to be processed without a problem. Having to eliminate the extra jobs would be mind numbing for 3/4 of the staff. Any sugguestions out of the context of the question would be equally welcome. Thanks in advance.

-Joshua Cowhig