spoolsv spikes to 100% when right-clicking desktop

[badbromike]

Yes, For a couple of months now I been noticing that when I right-click the desktop on my system running Win2K SP2 the pop-up menu takes about a second or two to pop-up. It's been really nagging me. Finally I have time to investigate it. So I open Taskman and lo and behold when I right-click, I get about a 100% CPU utilization spike for about a second with spoolsv.exe using most of the cpu time. Weird, what would the gui, explorer or desktop have to do with spoolsv, being part of the printing system...

So, I am the guy who setup the Win2K for the systems for about 400 users here at work. We actually bought all 400 at the same time so I could use the same ghost image. Believe that? I was floored when we made that decision. We got all the systems rolled out it's been about 6 months and lots of little issues, updates and such, but no huge problems yet. Anyway, some systems have the issue others don't which is weird. Don't have a good feel for concentration percentage yet, but have reproduced the issue on other pc's.

Many users are complaining of vague performance issues, sometimes they'll say it's in Office products like when they click File it takes awhile for the menu to drop down or similar issues in other apps, and I've noticed odd performance lags on my system, but haven't been able to reproduce them consistently, except for the desktop thing.

The systems are Micron Client Pro CN, which has either has a 700 or 866 Mhz Pentium III on a Intel 815 mobo using the embedded video and embedded Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Ethernet NIC, 128 MB RAM, 20 Gig WD HDD. Almost all users are still at W2K SP1.

Oddly enough there are two networks here, token ring (So some systems have a Madge Smart 16/4 PCI Ringnode Mk2 NIC)and ethernet, but the issue seems to be occuring on both.

We are running Novell 5.1 servers, using NDS for authentication, using the 4.8 sp3 Zen client. We have enabled and have been using roaming profiles under ZEN for about 6 months now. We are using McAfee for virus protection on all the systems. We use the Novell Application Launcher to ditribute and provide shortcuts to apps, and to push out all updates to W2K, IE, Office, and Novell. We have rolled out Novell Distributed Print Services, and most of our printers have been handled by NDPS for about 3 months now.

We have had NDPS issues, so I tried deleting my NDPS printers, reinstalling the client without NDPS support, tried updating the spoolsv.exe 5.0.2161.1 which is dated 12/7/99 to 5.0.2195.3555 4/20/99, downloaded and installed the latest Intel video driver 6.4 and just for kicks re-service packed my system with SP2. I am going to try updating all the drivers systematically.

Although it could be related to NDPS somehow, it is curious that this occurs on only some systems regardless of fact that all are using NDPS.

It could be the amount of RAM that is part of the problem, and given the price of RAM we have ordered 100 128 MB sticks from Micron at about 40 bucks a pop, so we'll see what happens, it could be that the vague performance issues I was referring to could be swap delays, etc, but it's still odd that spoolsv.exe is running with a task that should be belong almost entirely to explorer.

Any ideas would be mucho appreciato

Michael

 

[badbromike]

I emailed this to a buddy of mine and here was his reply:

Hey listen up. Spoolsrv is kinda broke in my opnion. We have several machines that will not run Matrox g450 or Nvidia Geforce2 cards with WIN 2k without causing a huge memory leak related to Spoolsrv. It will just eat all your ram as you watch helplessly. If you remove the driver and you can use any version of the driver old or new the error will still persist, then the leak goes away. I have about 27 Dimensions and four of them no matter what will not allow the driver to be loaded without spoolsrv going nuts and eating up all the ram. If you get another kind of card say and ATI rage it will work fine. I have no idea why these few machines do this. Hey that opening up Word etc and the drop down taking forever to open goes on here to. We also have some Workstations that do it to. Again we can rebuild them and put any Win2k upgrade on you please the cards will not work without spoolsrv going all ram hungry. I have tried 10 different G450 cards and 4 different Geforce 2 Ultra none of them work in these few machines without kill spoolsrv. All the machines have the weird Office drop down delay.

Michael

"Anything can be fixed with a big enough hammer." Old Navy Proverb

 

[Meldric]

We have similiar problems with the weird Office drop down delay and also a problem where any office app takes a large amount of time to open(2+ minutes). It is only on a handfull of machines, but they are all Micron ClientPro CNs. We use Drive Image Pro to image the drives. The funny thing is it is not on all the machines, just a handfull. We upgraded the memory to 256 and it didn't help. I am going to try loading a fresh copy of Win2k on one of the machines and see if the problem persists. I think perhaps something to do with the image.

If anyone finds out anything I would love to hear about it.

Roger

 

[badbromike]

Hmmmm thats really interesting, we are all apparently experiencing the same things. Certainly this has been discussed somewhere else on the web, but I sure haven't seen anyone else talking about it. Maybe cuz it really hard to nail down or reproduce consistently.

Anyway, what kinda network are you running there MS or Novell or Linux or? I'm gonna check my bios rev, maybe flash it with the latest, and then prolly re-image my system. Whats your bios rev on the CN's that are having problems. It prolly has nothing to do with the bios rev tho because my buddy Randall was reproducing the problem on Dell Dimensions, unless they have the same 815 mobo.

Also we are using Ghost 6.5 Enterprise here to ghost our systems.

Michael

"Anything can be fixed with a big enough hammer." Old Navy Proverb