Print spooler problems

[Pistol34]

Recently the print spooler service on our 2000 server is on the fritz. The service stops working properly and then can not be stopped with out "error 12 service code invalid" There are also other event errors calling out specific dll problems. Unable to load certain dll functions. Also errors in the WMI interface.

I am thinking file corruption or registry problems. Any other ideas.

Thanks

 

[eclap]

A problem that we had may be similar to yours. When I installed a certain printer on our Win2k print server and it was called either locally or from a remote workstation, the process "spoolsv.exe" would hang the system. I found that simply removing the print queue/printer was impossible, as that, too would hang the system. Had to use the registry editor to remove all instances of that particular printer from the registry. Everything seemed to work ok after that, and I was able to successfully add the printer to another (different) server. Hope this helps.

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

Certain printer drivers do not coexist well. Nobody in the printer business will admit it unless you're using one of their printers and someone else's printer driver messes yours up - they'll scream to the heavens about that other driver being the problem at that point.

Doesn't help you much though.

Fact is, something in your printer pool is pretty out of whack. I'd suggest backtracking to the last software installed. What dll's were replaced? Keep going until you find something that modifies the dll's you're having the problems with. Just because a DLL is "certified" doesn't mean it's good necessarily

Without having detailed logs, I'm afraid I can't offer much more help than that.