Tune up for print spooler system
The print spooler service is a subsystem of your OS designed to manage print jobs as an intermediary between fast file transfer operations and relatively slow printing device. It has a special manager that puts documents into print queue that might be adjusted by the user on the matter of the printing order. Then documents are sent to the printer or printers connected to the hosting PC or sent to other hosts or servers over the network.
The print spooler service combines the spooler services provided by the operating system with drivers for particular printers, and this system is far from being perfect. As an example, printers might get old as their drivers, and the operating system might be updated or changed, and there is no 100% guaranty that the components of this system are always compatible.
Hence, if you make a major system update or you printers are getting old, check for new updated drivers for the hardware and install them. This will save you from incompatibility issues.
Many problems related to print spooler service might be caused by malware and its activity on your PC. Viruses might corrupt some files that this service depends on, and then it will get out of order at the moment when it is the most needed thing in the world.
Keep your antivirus up-to-date and run system scans by some schedule or any time when virus activity in your system is detected. You need to do this before you try to make something with the faulty spooler system, because infected files might be deleted by the antivirus, or the virus will fight back and delete some needed files from your system – you never know what these bad guys might do. They might just screw up all the fixing you made. First try to kick them out of your system and the fix print spooler.
Some print spooler errors might relate to simple system overload, and you need think about that when planning on your network. Suppose there is a printer accessible over network that prints mostly the document coming from a single computer and prints very often. Then your network will be overloaded by file transfers, and the chance of error will be high. To resolve this issue just hook this printer as a local one to the PC that supplies it with a bunch of documents and make this printer visible to the network only if it is needed.
Very often errors are caused by the printer installed as a network printer over IP address on the TCP/IP por but not properly configured with the network. Often this happens when a new printer is installed but aren’t able to print. Try to configure TCP/IP port.
- To do this, click Start and open Control Panel
- Click Printers and Faxes and right-click on the icon of your printer.
- Select Properties in the menu and open Ports tab.
- Click on Configure Port button, turn off SNMP Status Enabled.
- Click OK and reboot your PC.
- Start print spooler service from Services.
Fast checks and fixes
If you run in real problems with print spooler service, try to perform steps for possible fixes in this sequence, or use a special utility that solves far more complicated problems with the print spooler:
Download Fix Wizard
Look for problems caused by single files:
Some document, in particular, MS Office document, sometimes hold graphics that not every driver can handle. This happen because graphics is assumed to fit printing area for the page while the graphics that might fit in container is not limited and might greatly exceed the size acceptable to the driver. Remember that the file placed in the container might have huge transparent areas and look like a normal one, but these areas make the document unprintable.
Try to restart spooler after it was stopped by the operating system
Restart your computer. Sometimes it solves the problem caused by interruption You can also start only the print spooler. For this you need to log on as an administrator.
- Press Start button.
- Open Control Panel and start Administrative Tools.
- Double-click Services. Scroll down to Print Spooler service.
- Right-click on it and select Restart.
- Try to clear corrupted print manager files
Sometimes the problem might be cause by corrupted print manager of the spooler service. To fix this problem, open folder C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS. Delete all files and folders in this folder. Try to restart your print spooler again.
Try to reinstall your printer:
The problem might be caused by corruption or by an absence of some system file that was accidentally deleted. Try to remove drivers and reinstall your printer.
- Stop the printer spooler service if it is running.
- Open folder C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers and remove all files from this folder.
- Unplug your printer cable from you PC and wait for 20 seconds.
- Plug it again and let it be recognized by the system.
- Start print spooler again.
Use Print Spooler Fix Wizard:
There is a few clicks solution that runs automated professional tests and makes fixes for any kind of problem that end in a print spooler error. It is backed by technical support and online assistance for most difficult problems.