Local computer Printer Spooler service crash

[randle]

Hi

I'm starting to see more and more computers here suffering from the Printer Spooler crashing meaning no printers show up until the service is started.

I've already removed any tried removing all .shd and .spl files from the "%systemroot%\system32\spool\printers" folder as have found that sometimes a job gets stuck.

I've also found that the local spoolsvr.exe file has "TrustedInstaller" as the owner and has been suggested that giving back ownership to the local adminstrators group is recommended.

In the past the above has given the impression that the problem is fixed however I've had 4 reported today so somethings not quite right!

Anyone else had this problem?

[plexer]

I have at least one windows 7 machine which constantly plays up with printers, if you restart the spooler of even the computer ocassionally you will get printers ok but other times loading printers and devices just goes on for ever.

Ben

[randle]

Rebooting in this instance is not fixing the problem making me wonder whether a recent Windows update or infection could be the cause maybe!?

Even if a reboot does fix this, I'd like to get to the bottom of what's causing the service to crash as unfortunately there's nothing useful in the event logs

[kmount]

Seen this before with dodgy print drivers.

Any new printers / drivers ?

[randle]

These are the same printer drivers I've been using prior to this problem occurring.

[andrew_91090]

We are having the exact same problem at our school, alot of the computers print spooler will crash, the service itself has to be restarted.
I read on a different forum to update all drivers on the server, which we did but to no luck, we then switched all the printers to a different server as we thought that that one might be over ran, but again, we are still having some problems.

[jlucas]

We've had a lot of problems with the print driver corrupting when being deployed via group policy preferences. The solution was to delete the registry keys associated with the drivers and re-start the print spooler. This webpage has all the details:
Specified Port is Unknown error when adding Network Printers « Weird & Wonderful IT

I have now made a log off script that deletes the registry entries on log off so its all ready for the next log in.

Hope that helps
James

[randle]

I'll take a look at that thanks. Will report back on whether it fixes the problem here

[jamesbrown]

We have this problem with 1 Windows 7 machine, However when the local printer is not attached the print spooler dosn't crash. At the minute they can only print to the network printers deployed through Group Policy.

[randle]

I may have lied a little in my initial post . I am getting errors in the application log which seem to be related to printer driver dll files. It appears that on deleting these files the service stops crashing or so I've seen so far, this problem has a tendency to reappear just when I think it's fixed.

I'm aware that only the printers available to the machine should be present but I think the problem is that for some reason when logging on, the last location's mapped printers are being mapped and requires a second log off/log on to map the correct printers. This is obviously downloading drivers for printers not required and could be the cause for the crash. I do have the "Process even if the GPOs have not changed" policy enabled which should stop this from happening however doesn't seem to be the case!

I don't know how I can stop printers from following users around other than the existing "Delete All" GPP setting that doesn't appear to be applying although could add a logoff script to remove all mapped printers which I used to use pre GPP however this shouldn't be neccessary!

[randle]

The culprit for the crashes on most computers appears to be "hpcpn6de.dll" which would point to the driver however when I last updated to the HP universal driver, this caused more problems and so had to revert back to the Windows 2003 drivers!

[randle]

Just a quick update. I've since started using the latest version of the HP Universal driver which does appear to have improved things but have had to manually remove the old driver from each machine using the registry method as doesn't want to go quietly even when it's not being used. Thanks for the help.

[m25man]

We have also had this start recently, fortunately ours was contained quite easily as it only seems to have affected 2 users.

Our affected PC's were XP Hosts with 2GB of RAM and HP 1020 GDI printers. Everything has been faultless for the last 3 years then in the last few weeks spooler crashes and printer hell!

We had localised it to the latest Adobe Reader 10.x and the HP GDI printer drivers.
Printing PDF's is what killed our spoolers, it would appear the Acroreader 10.x is producing far more complex bitmaps that crash the spooler.

We found that removing the GDI printer from the mix the problem was resolved, more ram in the host also solved it, the HP Universal driver also solves the issue as long as the printer has sufficient onboard RAM to accept a whole page of PCL5 .

We have ended up removing the HP1020's and relocated them to machines that had 4GB of Ram in them, the 2GB Ram Machines have HP1060's now which whilst is still a GDI Host Based Printer has 32Mb of Ram and they are happy.

So in conclusion, we think that Adobe 10 and/or mixed with a recent windows update has spawned a memory issue which in turn kills GDI print jobs.

It could be useful here if anyone experiencing a similar issue provide details of the printers installed/in use/killed by this bug.

The usual turning off Bi-directional printing changing printer setting to print as image and dozens of other tips all seem to have an impact but the only fix we have found is Printer replacement or increased RAM in the host.
Others have removed Adobe and installed FoxiT PDF Reader instead all of which is a pain if you have 500 machines to look after!

The trouble is most users do not have the ability or access rights to stop/start the spooler service or delete any spool files contained therein.

[randle]

From Google searches and here it seems apparent that the same symptom has many different causes meaning pinning this down to a specific issue is tricky. So far I've found that this can be:

1) Stuck printer jobs: A stop of the print spooler service and deleting .shd and .spl files under "%systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\" and restarting the service will get this running again.
2) Changing the ownership of "C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe" back to "Administrators". I found "TrustedInstaller" was set as owner on this file, which was suggested from other sources, that is set after an Adobe Reader install.
3) Errors logged in the application event log stating that hpxxxxxx.dll files are causing the spooler service to crash. Installing the latest HP Universal driver PCL6 and deleting the old one from the clients appears to have calmed things down here.

I've also change a GPO setting which seemed like a good idea and was a suggestion when running windows troubleshooting:
Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Printers
* Execute print drivers in isolated processes - Enabled

The idea being that a bad driver will only kill it's own printer connection rather than the spoolsv.exe in turn dropping all connections!

Obviously others have found different causes but the above for me appears to have been the main issues I've found so far.

[witch]

I have what may or may not be the same issue. Brand new Windows 7 machine. If a user logs on, the print spooler stops and so they cant print.
Occasionally the printers are there in control panel, but dont appear in word or excel and cant be added as the spooler has stopped.
I have followed the instructions in here:
Specified Port is Unknown error when adding Network Printers « Weird & Wonderful IT
and changed the ownership of the system 32 files to administrators as above
I have also deleted the printers and drivers, deleted all reference to them in the registry, and installed different drivers.
No change
Has anyone got any ideas? I have other windows 7 machines that this isnt happening to so I really dont understand why it is these. They are all the same make but what could be causing it?
They have the same Windows 7 and Office 2010 installation as all the other computers in my school.
The main issue is, these are just the first two of a new batch and I dont want to use them if this is going to happen on every one.