Adding New Printer=Print Spooler Crash

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

I am experiencing a problem on a Windows 7 machine when trying to add a networked printer.

 

Initially having chosen the printer I require I get the error message: windows cannot add printer, then if I try again I get the error message about the print spooler service not running.

 

I'm logged on as an administrator and have tried fixes such s restarting and deleting the contents of the Printers and Drivers folders from C:\Windows\System32\Spool but no luck.

 

They are currently no other installed printers on this PC so I suspect its not a driver clash.

 

Any help will be welcome, thank you

[Duke5A]

The driver itself might be borked. Does this printer successfully install on other laptops running the same version and architecture of Windows on problem machine? Also, deleting the drivers folder inside the spool directory does not completely remove the driver. Remove the printer, stop the spool service, delete the driver's registry key and restart the spool service. When you go to reinstall the printer Windows will copy a fresh copy of the driver from the print server.

 

The key under environments will change depending on the architecture of Windows you're running.

 

[Zourous]

If you are getting spooler errors there are problems with a driver. I've found in the past with w7 it can be tricky to clear out the printer drivers, they won't always go easy. I did create a script in a previous thread that deletes all the printers and drivers, so you could try that. It was called something like "deleting printer drivers"

[t2i3m]

We sometimes have a similar issue when using HP printers, after removing any old hp programs/drivers from add/remove programs and checking the print server drivers screen and removing any drivers left over. Rebooting and reinstalling always seems to work.