Windows server 2003r2 print spool FIFO?

[Tim Medford]

I am a unix admin somewhat new to windows.

Can I assume that a windows print spool is guaranteed to be FIFO? I have a dedicated spool created on a server, the spool is not shared and only being accessed from a .Net console application running directly on that server.

I'm not concerned about other users injecting print jobs into this spool, I have that covered. I'm simply trying to confirm that the print spool itself will indeed behave in a FIFO manner. We have a large number of documents (40,000+) that need to be printed in a very specific order. I just need to make sure that if I get them into the spool in the right order, they will come back out in that same order.

I sometimes see things that concern me. For example, I submitted about 20,000 files into the spool. They started at job #2, and then after the 255th file was in the spool the next print job was assigned job #1? I'm not sure they print in job number order anyway, but just surprised me.

Thanks,
Tim

[Randy C.]

Tim,

This is out of my area of experience, but my research indicates the spooler basically is FIFO. However I cannot tell whether it's by the submission order or the order in which the job finishes spooling. This info may be found at

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Windows/microsoft.public.windows.server.general/2005-07/msg01776.html

Hope this helps. -Randy

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