Print Spooling Won't Start!

[AngelicKnight]

I am baffled.

Brand new Dell WinXP Pro machine. Has been printing just fine the past couple of days. Nothing new has been done to it, when suddenly, magically all of a sudden...

Print spool subsystem crashes! Yay! I restart the service, it immediately crashes upon starting. I reboot the whole system, starts up with spooling service still stopped (note it's set to automatic). Restart the service after reboot, immediately crashes again!

So, no print spool subsystem. Why? No clue. Best clue I have is a mere Service Control Manager 7034 error.

Any ideas???

[Tiger Shark]

Did you try deleting the printers and reinstalling them? It might be a damaged driver.

[!mitationRust]

Could it be that another service dependant on it is not starting? "Nothing new has been done to it" are you saying you haven't changed any settings for any services?

[AngelicKnight]

are you saying you haven't changed any settings for any services?

Correct.

[AngelicKnight]

Did you try deleting the printers and reinstalling them? It might be a damaged driver.

In order to see the printers in the printers folder in order to delete them, I have to have print spooling system running. Unless you know away around that?

[!mitationRust]

You mean the Printers and Faxes folder? Nothing is in there?
I would add/remove the printer software and folders then reinstall them, and then reconnect the printer.

[morganlefay]

Found this

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;324757

printer wouldnt be a lexmark...would it???

We had trouble with them and NT 4...swore I would never use lexmark again...due to the faulty drivers

MLF

[AngelicKnight]

Nope, HP 1000.

Disconnected the printer, and then the spooling system came back. So it was something with the printer connection (though it was fine a day ago).

So I finally just got fed up and swapped it out with an HP LJ 5 we have. That seems to be working fine. Go fig!

[morganlefay]

parallel or usb??

no automated updates etc??

As imitationrust said...someting has made itself dependant on the spooler service...a fax driver, internet print service??

Is the printer shared...I remember reading about a virus attacking the RPC service..thus killing shared printing??

What happens in safe mode? Can you uninstall then reinstall an updated driver then?

Just thoughts

MLF