Spooler Subsystem App Stopped Working

[Miscbrah]

Nah I'd tried that - one I'd seen before.

[bossman]

@Miscbrah:

 

If you look in the services.msc on the server do you have a service called pml driver hpz12?

 

If you do disable and stop the service, its from your HP printer driver installation and it is not required.

 

Also with HP printers or most printers in the registry HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers you will see all your printers listed click one of the plus signs alongside to open the contents up and you may see a folder with the name Copy Files, backup your registry first then delete this folder with the name Copy Files and see how you go from there, I had the same trouble a while back and this is what I did from some post I found buried deep on a forum like this one.

 

Before:

 

After:

Let me know how you get on

[Miscbrah]

Thanks! I found that service, set to off and disabled but still crashing.

 

Also went in the registry but none of the printers there had a CopyFiles.

[Miscbrah]

FIXED!

 

Finally after two days...

 

Solution is, if your printing gets as buggered up as mine did server-side, it's likely that the spooler and/or friends get butchered along with it all. Thing I did was stop the spooler service (REALLY turn it off so it can't start) and then get to work replacing the following folders:

 

%systemroot%\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86

%systemroot%\system32\spool\printers

%systemroot%\system32\spool\drivers\x64 (if 64bit install of Windows)

 

From a working server 2008 (or same as whatever OS you're on) machine. Then set the spooler service to auto start again and poof - all good now and re-adding printers.

 

Just putting that up for the benefit of any future Googlers or Edugeekers.