How to Move the Windows Default Paging File and Print Spooler to a Different Hard Disk (314105)

MORE INFORMATION

This article has three sections:

• Moving the Paging File
• Moving the Default Spool Directory for All Printers
• Moving the Default Spool Directory on a Per Printer Basis

Moving the Paging File

1. In Control Panel, double-click System.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Click Settings under Performance.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Change under Virtual Memory.
5. Select the new drive that you want to use to store the paging file.
6. Set Initial Size (MB) and Maximum size. For the initial size, Microsoft recommends that you use the recommended value in the Total Page File Size for All Drives box.
7. Click Set, and then click OK twice.
8. Click Restart Now.

Note that if you move the paging file from the system partition, Windows cannot write debug information to the disk if a Stop error occurs.

Moving the Default Spool Directory for All Printers

This procedure applies a new default spool directory to all printers that are configured on this computer.

1. In Control Panel, double-click Printers and Faxes.
2. On the File menu, click Server Properties, and then click the Advanced tab.
3. In the Spool Folder box, type the path that you want to use, and then click OK.

Moving the Default Spool Directory on a Per Printer Basis

This procedure applies a new default spool directory to a specific printer that is configured on this computer.

1. Start Registry Editor.
2. Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, locate the following key:

   \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers \specific printer\SpoolDirectory

3. Click the Specific Printers key.
4. Verify that the value SpoolDirectory is not displayed in the right pane. If it is not displayed, click Add Value on the Edit menu.
5. Use the following information to add a value:

   Value Name: SpoolDirectory
   Data Type: REG_SZ
   String: full path to printer spool directory

6. Quit Registry Editor.
7. Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then click Windows Explorer.
8. Click the drive on which you are creating the new spool directories, and then create the directories on the defined drive in each of the printer's SpoolDirectory registry values. For example, if the value under SpoolDirectory in the registry is "F:\SPOOL\PRINTQ1", create a directory named Spool on drive F, and then, under Spool, create a folder named Printq1.
   
   
9. If the new directories are located on an NTFS drive, assign the appropriate permissions to the spool directories.For additional information about spool directory permissions for Windows XP, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   137503 Default Windows Spool Directory and Permissions

10. Stop and restart the Spooler Service, under Services in Control Panel.

To verify the correct operation:

1. In Windows Explorer, click the spool directories on the appropriate drive.
2. Start a program (for example, Write) that has a document that is more than 100 KB.
3. Print the document and, while it is printing, immediately press ALT+TAB to move back to the Windows Explorer window.
   
   Two files, with the extensions .shd and .spl, are displayed in the right pane under the Spool directory. After the print job is complete, Windows deletes these two files. If no files are displayed, print a larger file.
4. Verify registry settings and NTFS file system permissions to confirm that the Spool directory resides on an NTFS partition.

Note that neither DefaultSpoolDirectory nor SpoolDirectory is set by default. The global default location for all printer spool files is %SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Printers. DefaultSpoolDirectory defines a new global default location for all printers to put their spool files. SpoolDirectory defines a new printer-specific location for spool files, which overrides the global default on a per-printer basis.

You must specify an actual directory; you cannot specify only the root directory (for example: "C:\"). Instead, you must use C:\Directory, where Directory is the name of the directory that you want to use. If you do specify the root directory as the default spool location, spooling reverts back to the %SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Printers directory.