Hello wonderful Assembler members Like some on this board, I'm a long-time lurker, occasional poster. I'm not one to ask for help in this kind of situation as nobody here has dealt with myself and may be hesitant, but I've read some posts from quite a few knowledgable computer users and am hoping those same people may shed some light on this... Okay, a customer has two Windows XP desktops, sharing broadband and an HP Officejet 7110 (over parallel) via DLink 704p router. Just recently, they have not been able to print. First few pages are fine, but spoolsv.exe bombs out afterwards and the Printer Spooler service stops. After monitoring the spoolsv in the Task Manager, I've seen it hog up to 100 MB of RAM when trying to print a 2 MB, 40 page document. Problem occurs locally, too, so I know it's not a problem with the 704p. Uninstall/reinstall of the HP software does not fix this, and HP was of little help. Tried printing directly to the printer with spooling disabled, but then nothing gets printed. I can't use the printer through USB as everyone needs to share it over parallel via the DLink. I've read soo many posts regarding this on the net, with people claiming that deleting the print jobs in the MS Image Writer queue resolve it... However, I see no print jobs queued up, and the HP queue is the only one listed in the Printers folder. There are no jobs in the system32\spool directory. Short of removing SP2 and trying another printer, I don't know what to do. I also find it strange that both machines are having a problem, but I doubt it's the printer as I wouldn't think that would cause spoolsv to eat up RAM. I've also performed a 'semi-full reset' on the printer to no avail. I feel embarassed asking for help without speaking up so often. Anyway, any help's appreciated
Is that a router that acts as a print server? Even though you think the problem is local, have you tried resetting the router - unplugging it from the wall and leaving for 30secs, or holding in the little button on the side (if there is one)? Check the manual if you have one, I don't have any experience with that model. Alternatively if you have one PC that's always on, use USB and set up network sharing to that PC. It's not too tough, google should be able to help. Not too sure what else to offer, printers were always the things I hated dealing with most in tech support since you almost always have to visit to sort them out, there's so many settings to fiddle with when they're networked. And they can be so temperamental...
Hey, thanks for the reply.. Yeah, I've reset the router. I've even removed all the previous printer drivers from the spool directory and from the registry, restarted and reinstalled... tried an older spoolsv.exe. Same deal. Also, HP's support was very minimal. Bah. F**king Windows. I think it's SP2. I know what you mean about printers... they are the ONLY things that give me problems when trying to troubleshoot stuff. I gotta face the guy tomorrow evening, so hopefully I can come up with a fix in the morning. Cheers!
Hmm... SP2 you say? And it's a network printer? Now I'm not quite sure how this might affect things, but SP2's got a built in firewall thing... is there a chance that might be blocking ip access to the printer? Try disabling it anyway, just to test. Otherwise rollback to SP1 (or *gasp* stock XP ^_^) and see if it works again, for a quick fix.
Try getting new drivers for the printer if there are any available. You never know - it might fix it. Could be the firewall thingy too. If possible, try using a different printer (preferably not HP) on the same network - at least that might give you some direction to where the fault lies if another printer also doesn't work.
If the problem occurs locally as well, chances are it's a problem with the printer. Does this happen when you try to use any other printer?
Okay, you guys want to know what the problem was? First, I thought it was isolated to just the printer as well. But before I bought another one for the guy, I tested it on my 2K machine... no problems! Go figure. Anyway, after yet even more research, it turns out that the Microsoft Image Writer installed as part of MS Office was the culprit. It was spooling everything to a file. I don't know about Office 2003, but always perform a custom install of Office 2K on an XP so you can deselect the Image Writer bastard :smt067 I greatly appreciate all the help!
Ah Jesus. The library here at uni has that as the default printer, it always catches me out. Glad it's all fixed, anyway.
