Spool.exe stops

[fitfixer]

I'm in charge of a small network;
Proliant 800 NT4 server with 60 or so Win98 and W2K clients,
Recently installed 2 HP 4550N Color laser printers, these were installed on the server and shared, Jet direct was not installed, most times the printers work fine, if they do not, I know that the Spool service has stopped

The print Spool service reports an error, sometimes this happens early in the morning when there is no network activity, the error appears on the screen and the Dr Watson log carries a long entry, the fault appears on a line; Fault 77f930dc 8a01 mov al,[ecx

This keeps happening and is disrupting other printing on the network, I have tried installing Jet Direct, updating NT4 to SP6a, reinstall print drivers, my next step is to move these printers to another server on their own,
If there is anybody out there who can tell me where to start on this one I would be very grateful

 

[tigergeek]

This is an Issue with NT 4.0 TSE. The Hotfix is q269214 it needs to be applied after SP6 TSE has been run. this should take care of most of the issues. I recommend that if you do not reboot your server every night or two that you setup and AT job to reboot the server automatically or any other automated job program or script( I like Winbatch ).

The only other solution that I have found that works is to install tricerat's Screwdriver product. It has a server side to buy and the client software is free. For NT it is up to version 1.62. I use it in a large NT 4.0 Terminal server/Citrix Metaframe 1.8 and it works very well.
Getting it licensed is a royal pain but the product is worth it.

 

[fitfixer]

Thanks TigerGeek,
I am not running Terminal Server, but I will apply the patch, first I have to reinstall SP6, I removed in to see if it help solve this, but it did not, your idea of rebooting the server regularly is good, I try to roboot manually once a week, but I will take your advice on automating a reboot every night

 

[darranagl]

There seems to a few issues with NT4 spooler and HP printers. Have a look through the link from the page below

http://search.support.microsoft.com...dType=ALL&Titles=false&numDays=&maxResults=25

New Zealand, a great place to visit.

http://www.southland.org.nz