The Print Spooler is the operating system service responsible for controlling the print queue and transferring documents to printers connected to the system as a local or network printers. If the print spooler service is not running, the consequence of such a failure will be print job stopped. If this problem happens with the network printer, you better call the network administration personnel to solve the problem professionally without taking a risk to do something wrong on your own. Even if this is a local printer in the network environment, you better opt for the professional help.

If the printer is local and you do not have IT personnel around, then you need to fix your print service by yourself. For this, you need figure out what was the cause of the problem that stopped you printers. The problem might be caused either by virus activity, by system data errors or corrupted system files and drivers, by third-party drivers and programs that are outdated or poorly designed, and by other reasons.

1) Unless, you need your printer right away for some urgent job, run your antivirus program and make sure that the recent updates for antivirus bases was installed. If you didn’t just install a new printer or driver or sent a huge bunch of document for print at once, it is very likely that the problem is caused by some malware.

2) Restart your computer. The system will shut down, and the print queue will be deleted and print spooler service should automatically restart. It might solve the problem with some corruptions in print queue or accidental failure and abortion of the print spoler service by the system.

3) If the system restart doesn’t help, then you need to enter your system as Administrator and perform some manual steps for fixing the service.

For Windows XP and Vista

Press Start and open Control Panel. Start Administrative Tools and double click on Services icon. Scroll down to Print Spooler service line and right click on it. Then, select Restart.

For Windows 7

Press “CTRL-ALT-DELETE” to access Services. Click Services button in the bottom right corner. It will bring up Local Services window. Scroll down and highlight Print Spooler. Hit the Restart the service link on the left side of the panel.

3) If the manual restart of the print spooler doesn’t help, than the problem is possibly caused by a frozen print manager list. Search for directory C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete all of the files in this folder to fix this problem. Then restart the print spooler service or the computer.

If none of above helps, then the problem might be caused by corrupted drivers or registry. It is a quite demanding process that requires knowledge and experience in working with Windows system services and tool. Unless you are a computer professional or a very advanced user, then the best and safe way for you is the use of professional print spooler fix utility that are designed to investigate your system and make all the necessary fixes and adjustments to your system. The good thing about this way is that you will also have professional assistance for problems that even this professional tool are not able to resolve automatically.

Download Fix Wizard

You can also opt for a free FixIt wizard from Microsoft and update needed drivers on http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/printer-problems-in-windows. This way of updating drivers might be preferable, unless you know how to contact the vendor and clarify if the printer is compatible with your operation system.