printer spooler service keeps stopping on Windows 2000 Terminal server

[dmurfitt]

Hi,

We have a Windows 2000 Terminal Server, which keeps having problems with the spooler service. When I log on, the server is very slow, and the spoolersv.exe is at the top of the CPU usage list. Then, the spooler service stops and I loose all my printers. I have set the spooler service to automatically recover, and restart if stopped, but this keeps happening, and the performance and reliablilty is very poor. There are 53 printers in the printer list, and there are no end of warnings in the event log telling me that printers are being added and pending deletion. But as I understand, this is normal within terminal services. Has anyone come across this problem before?

Thanks a lot for any help,

Daniel Murfitt

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Daniel Murfitt
ARC (UK) Systems Ltd.

http://www.arcsystems.co.uk

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[Smorgan11]

only time i have seen this is where an application tries to send a print job to the printer and it causes the spooler service to hog all the CPU time. The program that caused the issue for me was a 16 bit app

hope this helps

 

[DanZeMan]

We have had one heck of a time getting a stable Win2K print server. Suggestions that we have tried:
Moving spool folder onto another disk (besides C: or Swap)
Ensure that you are not mixing modes of printer drivers (ie nt/wink and native win2k)
check the versions of your hp printer drivers to ensure that they are the latest.
Turn on full report to event logs, then look closely at the clients/printers that are the last ones before the spooler dies.
Have each printer spool to a different folder (reg hack)

Also, make sure that all the clients connecting to the terminal server have unique names. I would also suggest that you minimize the # of drivers, and use a spoofing table for the oddball printers

 

[mjbianco15]

Here are a few hotfixes from MS that might help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;822834

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;840371