Print Spooler will not start

[sol1109]

Spent about 10 hours trying to resolve a network printing problem on a laptop today and now I am asking for your help. The HP laptop stopped printing with the message "Print Spooler is not running". I tried starting it at services.msc but it will not start. I tried uninstalling the printer from add/remove and could only remove the printer applications but the driver will not uninstall because the print spooler is not running. I tried reinstalling the printer but it will not because the spooler is not running. I tried installing a different printer with the same failure. Microsoft FixIt identified the spooler as not running, tried to start it and it failed immediately. FixIt said it could not help. I checked windows update and it is up to date. Printers work with 4 other pc's on the network. OS: Win 7 Pro

 

[DelJo63]

Treat it as if there are jobs in the print queue that can't be deleted. As I recall you delete the subdirectory in the Spooler directory used for that specific printer.

Try running this troubleshooter

=== Update ===
Here's another Wizard

 

[sol1109]

Thank you for your reply jobeard. I had tried that but on your sugestion I retested using the troubleshooter. See the attached file for the results.

 

[DelJo63]

Data execution prevention.
I have added the print spooler service to the excluded list and it has solved the problem.

For Win/7 see this

Others, right-click My Computer->Properties>Advanced

• Select Performance>Settings
• Select Data Execution Prevention
• Select Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select
• Click Add
• Paste this in to the file name box of the window that opens:
• C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
• Select Open
• Select OK when you receive the warning
• Select Apply

 

[sol1109]

When selecting OPEN for spoolsv.exe I get the msg: You can not set DEP attributes on 64 bit executables.

 

[Pan Wah]

This can happen due to conflicts with IE add-ons, suggest temporarily disabling them, and if this solves it, enabling one by one to identify the culprit.
Good luck

 

[DelJo63]

This can happen due to conflicts with IE add-ons, suggest temporarily disabling them, and if this solves it, enabling one by one to identify the culprit.
Good luck

hmm; think about this a bit. The Print Spooler is a system level service and gets started at boot time.
The browser - - any browser - - starts only when the user invokes it and the print server should already be active.
Therefore, the browser has no interaction to start this service and add-ons are not related.

 

[Pan Wah]

Ok, sorry sol, the times that this has happened (and were resolved by the above process) were imaginary, and I've made a fool of myself, just ignore me, jobeard will see you right.

 

[sol1109]

Thank you all for your input. After my son completed his finals we decided to perform a complete restore as suggested by HP support. His problem has been resolved. Happy Holidays to ALL.