Windows Spooler Registry

You can get general information about the Windows Spooler registry entries in the knowledgebase article Q102966 Registry Entries for Printing.

Joachim E. Deußen has published some very useful documents on different registry tweaks to control the printing on Windows.

You can get the PDF file at his excelent site http://www.cyrtech.de/ or directly at the following links:

• Windows Printer Registry Tweaks.
• Windows LPR/LPD Registry Tweaks.

Various printer options can be set via the windows registry.

Each installed printer has a subkey in the following Registry path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\<printer name>

Under this there is a attributes bitmap, in the value Attributes : REG_DWORD

• 0001 (0×0001) Queued: Print jobs are buffered and queued.
• 0002 (0×0002) Direct: Document to be sent directly to the printer. This value is used if print jobs are not being queued correctly.
• 0004 (0×0004) Default: Default printer on a computer.
• 0008 (0×0008) Shared: Available as a shared network resource.
• 0016 (0×0010) Network: Attached to a network. If both Local and Network bits are set, this indicates a network printer.
• 0032 (0×0020) Hidden: Hidden from some users on the network.
• 0064 (0×0040) Local: Directly connected to a computer. If both Local and Network bits are set, this indicates a network printer.
• 0128 (0×0080) EnableDevQ: Enable the queue on the printer if available.
• 0256 (0×0100) KeepPrintedJobs: Spooler should not delete documents after they are printed.
• 0512 (0×0200) DoCompleteFirst: Start jobs that are finished spooling first.
• 1024 (0×0400) WorkOffline: Queue print jobs when a printer is not available.
• 2048 (0×0800) EnableBIDI: Enable bi-directional printing.
• 4096 (0×1000) RawOnly: Allow only raw data type jobs to be spooled.
• 8192 (0×2000) Published: Published in the network directory service.

The spooler service might need to be restarted, for the changes to take effect.