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Printer Spooler Shut down

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9 replies

by bennytoh

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I have a Win2k Server setup as a print server and the specs are as stated below
266MH
384MB RAM
2GB Hdd
The print server was previously serving 80 users in an AD environment with win98 clients. My company is undergoing upgrade to Win2k for the clients.
The problem is ...
Every now and then the Print spooler service shuts itself down and does not auto recover itself. it keeps doing this for the rest of the day. this has never happened in the past. Help!
There are no Temp files and there is 233MB of space left in there (Same as before the upgrade).

9 replies

by jasonschambers

You can install service pack 3 and it is suppose to fix the print spooler problem in a mixed enviroment, but I would not soley rely on that.
In the services section under admin tools you can right click and go to properties and specify what to do when the service stops.
It has a couple options as to what action to take if the service fails and one of them is to automaticlyy restart the service.
I would monitor your log files and see if you can get a reason as to why it is stopping.
Good Luck

by bennytoh

Sorry but i did that already. and it still didn't work out. i am getting event IDs 45,2510-The server was unable to map error code 1722/7, 7031,8005,2013, 19, 8021, 54. all these errors and i think i might have to relocate the Print spooler location.

by timwalsh

What warning/error messages are you receiving in Event Viewer?

Are you still servicing 80 users on this print server?

My gut feeling is the problem is due to lack of "space" on the hard drive. I have seen a single graphics-intensive color powerpoint presentation suck up 3 times the amount of free space you have while spooling. Graphics can cause a spooled print job to grow to many times the actual size of the file.

Get a bigger hard drive and move your spooler file to the bigger harddrive.

Of course what you find find in the Event Viewer may lead in an entirely different direction. Let us know what you find.

by bennytoh

Thanks this helped me and for those who are interested go to start-->settings --> printers --> file --> Server Properties --> Advanced --> Spool Folder to change the setting to another folder.

by curlergirl

What type of printers are you serving? I have seen this problem in one situation with HP Laserjet printers where there was an incompatibility between the drivers on the server and the drivers on the workstations, because of workstations with non-Win2K operating system (in this case it was XP Pro workstations). I was using HP drivers and ended up having to switch to the Microsoft drivers to solve the problem. If this fits, try it.

by scottfrancis

I also had this problem .Everytime a user printed to a hp 890c the spooler service stopped and would not start again. I would check drivers as it was causing the problem for me. Once I had changed the driver the problem went. What printers are you running?

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