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Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

#1
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6/7/08 at 2:48pm
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I currently have three printers hooked up to my PC: an HP LaserJet 5 via network, an HP Deskjet 932C hooked up to the printer connector on my PC, and a Canon Pixma Photo Printer via USB.

As of a couple of days ago, I have been unable to print and all have my printer drivers seem to have disappeared. Whenever I go to "add printers" I am told I cannot because my print spooler is not running. I go to administrative tools/services and start the printer spooler and it does nothing. The Print spooler IS set to automatic but doesn't seem to be working/running...even when started manually under administrative tools.

I have done a jillion google searches and have found nothing to do the trick. Even the oft-cited Bruce Sanderson spooler clean-up technique didn't work. I edited my registry, ran Microsoft's cleanspl.exe function and have deleted all printer drivers/files from my system as recommended by Sanderson...and yet nothing...the spooler doesn't seem to want to run--no matter what.

I have read a number of comments from similarly frustrated folks who have resorted to re-installations of Windows. I am running XP by the way. I would love to avoid that and just get this printer thing fixed.

Oh. I also tried to do a System Restore (which I have seen advocated). I set it back to a couple of weeks ago...which is long before the problem began. Nothing.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else been through this? I have NO IDEA what precipitated the problem.

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

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#2
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6/7/08 at 4:46pm
  • Joined: October 2001
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Some articles suggest re-installing Service Pack 2. I wonder if I should do that...or install SP 3 (which, I read, also includes everything in SPs 1 & 2).

It is amazing that a problem like this can be THIS FRUSTRATING!!!

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

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#3
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6/7/08 at 7:47pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Well, I don't have much hope this'll work given what you've tried - but my one and only bad experience with the print spooler was solved by going in and manually deleting the spool file. It's usually in C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS.

Also, have you gone into the event viewer and looked for any obvious error messages?
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#4
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6/7/08 at 9:05pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Al: Part of the regimen I described above includes deleting all files out of the Spool/Printers AND Spool/Drivers/w32x86 folders. So, that's been done--even in safe mode!

What is this "event viewer?" That's new to me. I'll give ANYTHING a try at this stage.

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

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#5
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6/7/08 at 9:49pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage" to get to the Computer Management window. On the left side under "System Tools" is "Event Viewer" and you'll see 3 sections: Application, Security, and System. There's where all the events are logged and it may tells you something (or not).

Alternate way to get to Event Viewer:

Open up Control Panel and then open up Administrative Tools. Then you can open up Event Viewer (by double-clicking on it).

----------

I'd be careful about installing SP3 (there are some gotcha's depending on your PC maker and CPU, and other things).

Re-applying SP2 might help, but you never know until you do it. Anyway, you should try to back up your hard drive (i.e. image it to another hard drive, or at least create an image of the boot hard drive, just in case).

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#6
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6/8/08 at 5:09am
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

If you see an event that interests you (obviously you'll be looking for Warnings and Errors - or maybe something with 'print' in the name) you can double click it for additional information. Sometimes this provides hints for futher investigation.
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#7
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6/8/08 at 3:49pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

You could try the restore functionality built into XP. That restore function is something I always forget about, but it frequently works for these types of problems.
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#8
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6/8/08 at 4:45pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Frezon
Some articles suggest re-installing Service Pack 2. I wonder if I should do that...or install SP 3 (which, I read, also includes everything in SPs 1 & 2).

It is amazing that a problem like this can be THIS FRUSTRATING!!!

Mike;

I think you know by now [but maybe you're in denial ] that you're probably going to have to start from scratch. If you have the disk space, you can just install a clean XP version in a new partition. That way you don't have to loose any data. If this works, you might even try copying the new print spooler file[s] to the original partition and see if it fixes the problem. A long shot, but you just never know with Windows.

Good luck. I know how you feel as I've spent many nights troubleshooting obscure Windows problems.

John

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Any of YOU guys call ME Francis, and I'll kill ya!"

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#9
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6/8/08 at 6:26pm
  • Joined: October 2001
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Thanks, fellas, for the info on the Event Viewer. You learn something new every day. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything which stood out to me as the "event" which caused my problem.

John: I can tell you've been there. I've got just enough knowledge of Windows and PCs to keep me up late at nights trying to fix my own (and my family's) computer problems!

I guess I AM in denial. I really don't want to go thru the hassle of a re-install. Actually, I've never done one with XP and am unsure how to go about it with the "authentication" crap.

Of course, I also realize how much further ahead I'll be when it comes to speed and reaction time after I "clean the slate." Something to look forward to, I guess.

I find it really hard to believe--in this day and age--that I cannot simply "Google" the problem and find the information with the answer that's going to fix it for me. I found all kinds of answers to this problem...but none of them seemed to work for me.

I guess I should start getting myself organized--what files to keep, etc....

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
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#10
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6/11/08 at 1:59pm
  • Joined: August 2001
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

NM. Seems you already tried the advice I was going to give. Looks like a wipe/reinstall may be in order.
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#11
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6/18/08 at 3:07am
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Mike:

Go to CCleaner - Home and download the file. It is a freeware program that you can run on your system that take out files and cleans up the registry for you. It is freeware and it won't hurt to run it to see if it fixes the problem or not before you trying doing a fresh install. After you run it see if you can install any of your print drivers.

Parker

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#12
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6/18/08 at 6:35am
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Ooooh. Hope stays alive!

I still haven't done anything about my problems yet, Parker. So I'm still in the "I'm willing to give anything a try" mode.

I'll give it a shot after work tonight (if time allows--I've got an especially late night tonight).

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
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#13
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6/22/08 at 4:20pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Mike:

So....did you get your print spooler problem sorted out?

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#14
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6/23/08 at 11:16am
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Not yet...but I have installed a new toilet which led to a near-complete renovation of the bathroom!

You know how it goes: Toilet's gotta come out so it's an ideal time to paint. If you're going to change the paint color, you've got to change the wallpaper. Then, might as well get new fixtures, towel racks, etc.

But I will be checking out CCleaner...and soon!

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
Export to Wiki
#15
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6/23/08 at 8:26pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Ran CCleaner tonight, Parker...both the "regular" cleaner and the registry cleaner.

Sadly, it seemed to have no effect.

Although I did delete all my cookies! Guess I'll be logging back in to all my favorite sites & forums, et al.

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
Export to Wiki
#16
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6/24/08 at 8:21pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Mike:

Sounds like you are going to have to do a fresh install anyway. CCleaner can be set to not remove your cookies.

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#17
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7/2/08 at 1:27pm
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Do you fellas recommend a fresh install over a "reinstall" of XP over my existing setup?

While the advantages are rather obvious whenever you start fresh, it seems as if a reinstall (if it worked to fix the print spooler problem) would be a lot easier/faster.

As you can tell, I'm really dragging my feet here because I don't have a lot of free time right now to do this. But not being able to print from my desktop is beoming a PITA.

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
Export to Wiki
#18
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8/11/08 at 8:14am
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Re: Anyone ever conquer Print Spooler problems?

Well...here's my story (and I'm sticking with it)...

I had another problem arise on my PC the other day. After a reboot I got a black screen with an active white cursor showing. No desktop/icons. Couldn't "do" anything. Safe mode didn't work. I re-seated all my cables, cards, RAM, etc. Nothing.

A google search showed that there had been a lot of similar problems reported recently. A possible virus/trojan/whatever.

So, I figure it's either that (anti-virus WAS temporarily disabled) or just some kind of random corruption of some files/HDD sectors.

One of the things suggested was to run an HDD diagnostics program. I did (Seagate's SeaTools) and found nine problems on my HDD. I had them repaired. On the subsequent re-boot, XP went through a self-check (CheckDisk) and repaired a slew of files (mainly .dlls).

My GUI showed up, my print spooler problems went away, and a problem I was having with Windows Media Player was also solved.

So I am back in business! Yay! And I have promised to myself I will back up all pertinent files and likely do a fresh, clean install of XP in the very near future.

Thanks to all for your help and input.

There's Jessie the yodeling cowgirl. Bullseye, he's Woody's horse. Pete the old prospector. And, Woody, the man himself. Of course, it's time for Woody's RoundUp. He's the very best! He's the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west!

Top Ten Ways to Find Good Deals on DVDs and Blu-ray...
Export to Wiki
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