windows 2000 spoolsv.exe 11

[hughessoft]

On startup in windows 2000 Pro i get the message spoolsv.exe error.

This has deleted all the printers and will not let me re add them. I have tried last know good, and manually starting and stopiing the event - no success.

Any ideas.

Neil Hughes

 

[DavidJoshua]

Rdesacola's suggestion worked perfectly!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

-=david=-

 

[Guest_imported]

Yet another praise to your name, AZeemeri. Though I had service pack 3 installed, and hence the name was version-3 instead of version-2, i tried deleting that key and it worked like a charm. My spoolsv.exe problem was only when I printed from a CMD prompt or from a DOS program. But this resolved it as well. Thanks.

 

[brezel5]

Hi guys.
First of all: this is a great site and all of you who support other users while helping them fix theyre problems does great work!

however, to my question:
I tryed Azeemeris tipps and also Rdesacolas, but the problem wont go.
After rebooting the "spoolsv.exe error" continues if I try to print (word,Iexplo etc.).

After rebooting my machine the documents it won't print before, it prints now. But only immediatly after booting Win2k up.

Just if I want print again the spool-error come back again.
Hope someone of you can help me, reinstalling windows isnt fun! (;
cya

p.s. sorry for my english, i'm from germany.

 

[bac2u]

brezel5,

same with me. I tried Azeem's and Redescola's and neither worked because the settings in my reg were all correct and there were no printers to delete when I checked the winnt\system32\spool\printers folder.

however, I think I finally solved mine by resetting the spooling options on my local port printer. It somehow got set to "print directly to the printer" instead of "spool documents" and "start printing immediately". Anyhow, I've got my fingers crossed after a week of frustration with having to restart my computer every time I got the error.

Happy Friday!

bac2u

 

[hiccupchick]

Spoolsv.exe is hogging at least 50% of my cpu time and leaves applications that access the printer hanging with an incredibly slow screen redraw even on a 900Mhz system.

I had to trash my original Win2k installation because of spoolsv acting in a rogue way, and now the new installation with the latest pre-SP4 updates is failing to print and hogging all the system resources while it does whatever it is doing in the ozone. Is this a virus?

 

[perryjones]

SPOOLSV on my system (Win2K Pro) starts hogging cpu time, varying between 30 and 70%. This is much like what other contributors have noticed. However we are running MCAfee virus software and when SPOOLSV starts consuming cpu, MCSHIELD.EXE starts using whatever processor power is left resulting in 95 to 98% cpu usage. The two programs sit there sharing all the cpu power but oscillating between 30 and 70% each. Noting hiccupchick's comment about this being a virus, could this be a clue?

 

[hiccupchick]

I'm running VET anti-virus, it doesn't seem to have a problem, but a few other things abour SPOOLSV.EXE that i find suspicious are:

I can't kill the process using Task Manager <access denied>

when spoolsv is hogging cpu time there is a lot of unexpected network traffic from this machine.

 

[billiamian]

Not a solution, but for temporary relief from spoolsv.exe over-taxing your CPU, turn it off.
Right-click &quot;My computer&quot;, select &quot;Manage&quot;.
In the bottom of the subsequent window open &quot;Services and Applications&quot;, then open &quot;Services&quot;.
The service &quot;Print Spooler&quot; is the process &quot;spoolsv.exe&quot;. You can confirm by double-clicking it and checking the field &quot;Path to executable&quot; which should look something like &quot;C:\W2K\system32\spoolsv.exe&quot;.
You can disable it, set it to manual, or simply stop it for the time being.

No real solution, but until you resolve the deeper issue, you can at least regain control and avoid constant rebooting.

Interestingly, I don't even have a printer. I noticed the process running and found this forum as I was looking for info (afraid it was the latest worm, using spools.exe). I had the process set to &quot;Manual&quot; and mysteriously found it &quot;started&quot;.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Shady]

I had this problem on a Windows2K TS Server.
All the printers disappeared and I couldn't add new ones.
I didn't really want to lose all 30 printers which were setup on this server by just removing the full version-3 key so I did the following:-

In the registry I had to edit the following key :-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3]

(SAVE THE VERSION-3 KEY FIRST) using the export function.

I removed each of the printer entries one at a time stopping and starting the spooler between and tried to add a new printer.

After removing the eighth printer in the list the 'add printer' function kicked in ok.

I then stopped the print spooler service and imported the version-3 key back using the import function which reinstalled the previous info I had removed.
I started the print spooler service again.

My intention was to just remove the failing printer but all now appeared to be working correctly.

I removed any entries for printers which were no longer in use to be safe and left a very happy customer to test his remaining printers.

SMASHING!

 

[rootjedi]

I tried all the suggestions on this thread and none of them solved my problem on our local network.

If you delete the registry entries in:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-2]

or

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3]

it just deletes your printers. Not a real solution just a temporary fix to keep from getting error messages and high CPU usage.

I also tried solutions at

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/1/42.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=tech&FR=0

Didn't do the trick either. I solved the problem evetually after losing some hair over it. However the following solution may only apply to a small number of networks running Novell Netware Servers and WIN2K PRO workstations.

The problem turned out to be linked to switching our file and print server to a new Gigabit switch. I just hopped the patch cable from the old 10/100 switch to the new Giga-switch with out downing the server. I thought that this could be trouble but everything seemed to be fine for 2 days until users with WIN2K PRO tried to print or look at their printer settings. {enter our little friend spoolsv.exe-crash} After trying solution I could find on the Internet and anything we could think of here. I decided that it was the switch switching...lol :. I put everything back where it was and restarted our Netware 6 file and print server and that solved it. We have recently added NDPS print services to our network and apparently it is a little more picky about having it's communications interupted than the rest of the Netware services. Hope this little drama is of help somebody out there and saves you some grief. BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don't RETURN

 

[rootjedi]

I tried all the suggestions on this thread and none of them solved my problem on our local network.

If you delete the registry entries in:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-2]

or

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3]

it just deletes your printers. Not a real solution just a temporary fix to keep from getting error messages and high CPU usage.

I also tried solutions at

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/1/42.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=tech&FR=0

Didn't do the trick either. I solved the problem evetually after losing some hair over it. However the following solution may only apply to a small number of networks running Novell Netware Servers and WIN2K PRO workstations.

The problem turned out to be linked to switching our file and print server to a new Gigabit switch. I just hopped the patch cable from the old 10/100 switch to the new Giga-switch with out downing the server. I thought that this could be trouble but everything seemed to be fine for 2 days until users with WIN2K PRO tried to print or look at their printer settings. {enter our little friend spoolsv.exe-crash} After trying every solution I could find on the Internet and anything we could think of here. I decided that it was the switch switching...lol :. I put everything back where it was and restarted our Netware 6 file and print server and that solved it. We have recently added NDPS print services to our network and apparently it is a little more picky about having it's communications interupted than the rest of the Netware services. Hope this little drama is of help somebody out there and saves you some grief. BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don't RETURN

 

[baloon]

We had the spoolsv problem on our clients after we had set up a new Win2000 server.
We first deleted the registry keys. But it did not help.
We then solved the problem by reinsalling Win2000 Servicepack 3 on the clients.

 

[mlinman]

After we moved from our servers from Windows NT to 2000, all my Windows 2000 Pro (SP3) clients starting bogging down with spoolsv.exe eating all the cpu. The printer is a HP Laserjet 4100 shared on LPT1 of the server. After trying almost everything in the forums and nothing working, here is what fixed it for me.

I unistalled the printer from the server and clients. The driver I was using was the lastest PCL 6 driver from the HP website. I found the cd that came with the printer and installed the PCL 5e driver from it and reinstalled the printer on all my clients.

Spoolsv.exe is now behaving.

Good Luck.

 

[prodarte]

I tried all of the recommended solutions in this thread and others, but still no sucess. Was having problems with Laserjet 8100/8150 network printers from 4 Win2k workstations.

What finally worked for me was to download the full Service pack 3 from microsoft and reinstall it on the workstations. Fixed all of the spoolsv.exe errors instantly. Hope this helps someone else.

Paul

 

[knorthrop]

Thanx to all for the useful advice. What I've found.

I installed Service pack 3 which worked for a while. Then, when the error reoccurred I used the c:/winnt/system32/spool/printers delete files fix. Which also worked for a while. When I got the error again I noticed that the files in the /printers file were shockwave flash objects. File extension .shd. The first time I deleted they were 00002.shd and the second time 00004.shd. So I'm assuming these /printers files are being overwritten when online and I'm further assuming it's pop-up ads (visiting pretty low-tech sites). Comments?

 

[TxCelt]

Anybody have a clue why spoolsv.exe, for an unshared local printer, would be trying to go out to my ISP's DNS server? (It got caught by my software firewall). Probably not a big issue, but it has me curious. I'm running Win2k,sp3, with current updates from the MS Windows Update site as of yesterday.
Thanks

 

[NeilMazza]

I suspect my spoolsv.exe has a virus in it, maybe spyware? Bascially it is setting off my zone alarm firewall all the time!! 2 times every 10 minutes here are some of the addresses it is trying to send data to

62.37.32.184 62-37-32-184.dialup.uni2.es
80.129.181.166 p5081b5a6.dip.t-dialin.net
148.240.91.177:1040 dial-148-240-91-177.zone-2.dial.net.mx

This has got to be a virus! I'm glad I've got a firewall stopping my data going where I don't want it to go.

Has anyone heard of this virus?? How can I get rid of it?

Cheers,

Mazza

 

[DocNorton]

Hi,

Newbie to the forum - just to say thanks for the solution - it worked fine for me as well.


Chris

 

[stefanmalaer]

Hi
I have problems with my spooler service, whenn I try to start it I get the error message, that it can't be started.
Error 1058: Service can't be started, it's deactivated or not connected to activated devices.
Does anybody know this problem and a solution?

 

[SeedyMan]

Tried all the above with no success BUT have noticed that if I disable network access, then re-enable it immediately, the problem goes away until the next re-boot. Might be useful to someone as a temporary fix?