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Spool SV error - remove files

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3 replies

by iddy

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I am a technician in a university computer lab. We have recently upgraded the machines to Windows 2000 and are inconsistantly receiving "SpoolSV.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows" error.

I have found a work around which removes this error, though it requires that the files in the c:\winnt\system32\spool\printers folder be deleted. The problem is however that the USERS group by default in Win2k does not have any permissions to this directory (we are running NTFS).

Because this problem happens inconsistantly on random machines I was wondering if it would be possible to execute in a .bat file or in the login script each time a user logs in, a command which removes the files from this directory, however I am not sure how I would do this considering the users do not have any permissions to access this directory.

The login script runs using the USER group permissions, is there any way to make it run using the SYSTEM or administrator account just for the duration of the login script?

I really don't want to have to change the permissions to this directory otherwise it leaves the machines open to more abuse from the students.

Any suggestions?? (Novell and Zenworks are running on the backend if that helps)

3 replies

by joseph moore

I am not sure if this will work exactly, but it is worth a shot.
Try adding the RUNAS command in the login script, to specify the Administrator command, then run the delete files.
So, you could do this:

RUNAS /user:YOURDOMAIN\ADMINISTRATOR "del %windir%\system32\spool\printers\*.*"

The only thing I am not sure about is the password for the Administrator account. RUNAS will prompt for it, so I don't know if you can get the password to be passed in the RUNAS line. You will have to experiment with that to see.

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