Print Spooler locking up

we had a similar problem in our TS environment using session (mapped from client computers) printers. we for the longest time just had a scheduled task that restarted the spooler service every night.

then we saw the light and went this route >> http://www.uniprint.net/ProductUniPrintServer.aspx
now we don't have to worry about keeping drivers for all clients' printers installed on our terminal servers. not expensive at all for all the headache it saved.

Did we restarting the Spooler at night work?

it did.
i think people just X'ing out of the RDP/MSTSC client screens instead of doing a proper logout was locking up those printer mappings in the subsystem and eventually honking the whole thing. restarting the spooler cleared all those out so we started fresh each day.

I skipped to the bottom without reading your first post.
I am going to say you have an HP OfficeJet or All-in-One printer and are possibly (likely) running Windows Vista or Vista Family.

Now if I am right (and I know I am) think how did I know that and what the solution is.

5 yrs experience with HP printers has made me hate them, GARBAGE, have fun pulling your hair out until you get rid of it. I would rather come out of my own pocket and buy a customer a new printer then try to support that garbage from HP. P.S. the business class laser printers seem to be better but still junk, and sorry for being confusing but when I say printers its really just the drivers.

Well I tried the scheduled task to restart the print spooler but it didn't help.  I also set the limit on the terminal sessions so it would log them out after a couple of hours sitting there disconnected.  The print spooler still locked up this morning.

Were thinking about trying the uniprint option as we are starting to get frustrated with this issue.  Any other help or suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks!

Remove the devices from the server, remove the print server role, then reboot and re-add.

Kyocera FS-C1020MFP and Sharp AR-M280 first...

Then MS XPS Doc Writer and Quickbooks PDF Converter 2.0 and 3.0

The the two HP's, one at a time - 2600 first.

Between each one check for spooler errors....

Thanks for the response david.  We can try that but we aren't getting errors all the time.  It's usually only in the morning.  

I just remembered,
you can actually run UniPrint in evaluation mode prior to purchase. only gotcha is a watermark on printed pages.

So what's different in the morning - is there backups or synchronisations?

We ended up reformatting the server and that appears to be solving the issue. We tried this software and we still had issues, so thanks for helping us determine that the server was having issues.