Moving the Print Spooler

Custom Search

Problem:
Print jobs going to a printer server are processed extremely slowly or not all. There is not enough hard drive space left on the boot partition to process the print jobs. Can I move the spool files to another partition?

Versions:
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, 2000

Solution:

Yes, you can! It requires modifying an entry in the registry on the print server.

Find the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\DefaultSpoolDirectory

Then change the path to a directory on a partition with more available hard drive space. The default path is %SystemRoot%\system32\spool\Printers.

Restart the print server to put the modifications into effect.