Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

10.18. Manage Print Jobs

Problem

You need to pause or resume a print job or a print queue.

Solution

Use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). You can retrieve information from the print queue using a query with the Win32_PrintJob class, and you can use the Pause and Resume methods of the WMI Win32_PrintJob and Win32_Printer classes to manage the queue.

How It Works

WMI allows you to retrieve a vast amount of system information using a query-like syntax. One of the tasks you can perform with WMI is to retrieve a list of outstanding print jobs, along with information about each one. You can also perform operations such as printing and resuming a job or all the jobs for a printer. To use WMI, you need to add a reference to the System.Management.dll ...