2.1 Overview

In addition to protocols supporting communication between print clients and print servers, the Print Services system also supports externally defined system protocols for the Group Policy and Active Directory systems. The Print Services system uses the local file system services of the print server to store print jobs and printer drivers. The Print Services system also uses the local registry on the print server to persist the abstract data model (ADM) of the print server. The Print Services system has minimal interaction with other components of Windows.

Printers on a managed network are reflected in the Print Services system as print queues on a print server. Each print queue has an associated printer driver that is used by the Print Services system and applications to learn about printer capabilities, such as paper formats, color capabilities, and print quality. The associated printer driver is also responsible for conversion of application commands into a vendor-defined page description language (PDL) that is used to print a print job on a printer.

Print clients submit print jobs to the print queues. The print queues are managed by a print spooler component running on the print server that buffers and orders print jobs arriving from many print clients simultaneously, or jobs arriving at a higher speed than the printers are capable of handling.