Out of the blue, one of my workstations lost all of its printers. Turns out the print spooler service was not running. When I try to start the service, it works. As soon as I try to use one of the printers, or even see a list of the available printers in Control Panel / Printers and Faxes, the service dies again, and all the printers disappear.
It has been doing that for 4 days. There have been no updates or software installs on the machine for 2 weeks prior to the first failure.
The only errors I get in the event log are listed below. (actually, 1 error, coming up several times per day)
At the time the error occurred, the workstation was Win XP Pro SP2, with IE6. I have tried a system restore to a previous date - same behavior. Then I installed SP3 and IE7. Same behavior.
I can't seem to find a solution (or even a cause) for this behavior. I cannot remove the printer drivers so I can reinstall them 1 by 1.
The only EE threads I found on the topic led eventually to a full OS reinstall - I am trying to avoid that.
Please advise - thanks
Dell laptop
Pentium 4, 2Gb RAM
USB docking station
1 HP Laserjet 1012, USB, local
1 HO Color LJ 2600, network,
a Brother MFC
a networked office copier
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To quote from the link given below:
If the Print Spooler service fails when printing, when Windows starts or it can not be restarted, the usual reason is that one or more printer drivers is defective.
This page has some very good advice on how to clean up installed printer drivers so that you can reinstall the printer and hopefully correct your problem:
http://members.shaw.ca/bsa
I have been slowly getting rid of my HP LaserJet 1012's and replacing them with the newer model. I am not kidding you - EVERY PC that I have had the HP 1012 or HP1010 connected to has had the same problem you are describing. The print spooler quits for no good reason. As I replace them, the issue goes away.
Turn on the print spooler > then quickly get into the server properties and delete the drivers for the HP1012 - I guarantee the issue goes away.
I would make a check point while it works so if it stops working you can revert back to this status point using system restore.
right click "computer" and choose properties - click on 'advanced system settings'' - click on the "system protection" tab and at the bottom click on the "create" button to create a restore point.
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by: chilternPCPosted on 2009-08-10 at 11:21:42ID: 25062496
try this microsoft article:
http://support.microsoft.c