I was stumped until I found this site through Google.com
I had upgraded an NT system with all of the latest updates from
I then installed Win2000 Pro to take advantage of the USB support for a printer I needed to install.
After the upgrade to W2K the printers folder would not open.
I could not install anything. Everything I launched even after rebooting would not open. I could not get the Product Updates to run from the
site.
Spoolsv.exe spiked the usage up to 67%+ and consumed memory until the system crashed.
Here's what I did to finally fix the problem, Thanks to the help of several different postings on this site.
I took this suggestion from Azmath... "This is a complex problem with a simple answer. Just go to the control panel->admin tools->services and check the print spooler option is set to automatic (not disabled or manual). If not, set it to automatic option and then start the service. Hope this will solve ur problem irrespective of the type of printer."
I set the print spooler option to manual and rebooted.
This fixed the problem of running out of memory/resources but my system was running very very slow.
I then applied the fix from Novell as suggested by Billmac1958 in the Jul 27, 2001 posting...
"You might try one of these links
good luck
Billmac "
I am running the Novell Netware Client 4.8. I downloaded the 253829.exe file to C:\temp and followed their instructions for the fix. It installed a new NWWS2NDS.DLL file.
I then rebooted again and set the print spooler back to Automatic and rebooted.
It worked PERFECTLY, No registry to hack and no files to find to delete. Also all of my printers came back and I could print again. I have since downloaded all of the updates from Microsoft and the system still runs just fine.
I have duplicated this fix on 4 different systems and they all are running great.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH to everyone who helped me resolve this problem.