Print Spooler Hangs Windows 10

0 views

Skip to first unread message

Hermalindo Lepicier

unread,

Aug 3, 2024, 3:37:55 PM8/3/24

to longbirenri

A long story short, nothing will print on that server, and the Bartender program hangs whenever it tries to print anything or access the labels, etc. We also cannot access Devices and Printers or the newer Printers & Scanners settings. They will show no printers, but restarting the Print Spooler, they both will tick one step each time Print Spooler is restarted. For example, Devices and printers will not load when I try to open it from Control Panel. However, if we restart the Print Spooler, it then does open. If we try to open any printer, etc, it hangs and does not respond, click restart spooler and it displays that printer information. Each step of whatever process takes a spooler restart. This will not allow a removal or installation of a printer, as it hangs before it completes.

We have removed the C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS files that I have seen as solutions. We cannot change anything on the Print Management screen locally for this server now. Trying to run Get-Printers on this servers hangs. However, we have been able to change them remotely on this server through my other servers and Powershell. Using Remove-Printer and Remove-PrinterDriver, all printers were able to be removed, and 8 drivers state they are in use by one or more printers. Additionally, the Devices and Printers screen still shows 8 printers after all this, which are multiple copies of our large copiers.

I have run the chkdsk, but not the full /R. The regular found no error on the disks. I plan on doing the full /R this weekend when it is not in full production. Everything excepting the printing on the server is working well so far.

I have found that logging onto the server as a new user allowed me to access the Devices and Printers without restarting the Print Spooler, but I was not able to install a new printer. It would still hang on that. I have checked permissions on both users and they both should have admin rights to the server.

I had a case once where 2 different software systems were both using Windows Unidrivers but one (FacSYS desktop fax driver) would modify a file (STDNAMES.GPD) then lock it once installed so the second (manufacturer mini-driver) printer could not be installed or would corrupt if installed prior to the Fax driver.

They did have one interesting troubleshooting step: Set the Printer object to Print to File, thus removing the spooler process to see if it is completing the file rendering before engaging the spooler. You can examine the file to see the print language in use (PCL, PS, XPS, etc.) driver that created it, and other info.

Methods to send the resulting .prn file to a printer to test vary, but one way is to create a Generic/Text Only printer, open the file in Notepad and print it. Notepad will add a couple pages but the file should print in between. If you share the printer, you can also use a command line to Copy filename.prn \Server\GenericPrinter or use FTP PUT for models supporting that.

Using Bartender 10 Enterprise Automation, and a Zebra 110PAX4 printer, we would like to send label print jobs that will clear the spooler of the previous job. Example, we send a job of 1000 labels ...

I do have a print to file printer set up on my old bartender server (running on a VM with Windows Server 2003 R2). That has been what is covering me while I troubleshoot. I did not realize that it would remove the spooler process from the flow. Thanks for the ideas and information.

Absolutely those ports are treated differently. LPT ports are local and have no network reference unless they are mapped with NET USE, but this is only for software which cannot delineate network ports and only prints to local ports.

We are having the same reoccurring problem at our company with the print spooler on Windows Server 2012, namely that it's consuming a constant 50% CPU power and we cannot print, accessing the list of printers causes explorer to hang. Things we googled and tried already:

The system is a Windows Server 2012 (non R2). The printers were installed from the account that is using the printers programatically from the web application.The drivers are fetched from our main printer servers that host all printers (and they seem to work fine)

The print spooler keeps crashing even though I have tried and re-tried the recommended solutions of a) deleting spooled print jobs, b) going into Services and re-starting the print spooler, c) verifying it is set to start automatically and that the recovery modes are to restart, d) verifying that the RPC is running and dependent, etc. It continues to crash a few moments after manually restarting. Very frustrating.

The printer is working just fine, but the computer just can't seem to find it using wireless access or USB connections. Would appreciate other suggestions for how to solve this. Could it be a driver problem?

The problem began first as not being able to print messages or attachments from Firefox gmail. Initially I could print from WORD. But, now I can't seem to do any printing because the print spooler keeps crashing.

Thanks for taking an interest in the HP Support Forums After reading your post I see that you require assistance regarding issues with printing because of print spooler crashes. It will be a delight to assist you here.

Then download the latest full feature driver from -en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-officejet-pro-8620-e-all-in-one-printe... and install it on the computer after selecting the correct operating system.

Perform all these steps patiently as it is critical to resolving the issue. Good luck to you. I will keep a watch for your response. Please note that I am not overloading you with steps but instead, giving you more information to work with. We are as eager as you are to get the issue fixed. I request you to perform all these steps till the issue is fixed.

Could it be that you have a network printer which is offline and Calc waits for the Windows spooler response, because the specific document has printer settings which no longer work? See tdf#42673 With disconnected network printers, Calc hangs opening some files waiting on the Windows print spooler ?

As of now, there is no debug information / logging in release versions of LibreOffice; it is removed during compilation of the release builds. There was some limited discussion about keeping it there, but nothing decided yet.

Thanks for the links and suggestions.
As a software developer if you want to increase the ability to resolve bugs, it is very useful to have some kind of debugging log that can capture more information for problem situations.
I understand the desire to remove extra code for release version, however I also understand the benefit of being able to capture information from unusual problems and having better information for trying to investigate.
Thank you for the links.
I will pursue these and see what I find.

So we are running SAPSprint 7600.1.8.56 and it seems 'stable' - we have been on this version for some time now, and we print 10k+ pages per day to various printers in our landscape. 99.9% of the time, we have no issues.

We have seen random cases where during a heavy printer load, we have a print packets hang in the Windows Queue for the print device; usually it is just a single printer. We have seen this happen to 3 devices within a 15 min timeframe.

We have worked with IT and have tried various things like changing the device drivers on the Windows print servers, etc but we continue to see this. I'd say in a month we typically see 1-4 cases where our background job executes and sends packets to the spooler, and one of the packets to a printer will hang in the Windows Print Queue for the device.

We are unable to cancel the print, and we cannot delete it, and it holds up every SAP spool for that device behind it (in SP01 these will show at Proc status). We have IT clear the packet, which involves restarting the Windows Spooler and SAPSprint service. The restart of the SAPSprint causes those spools in Proc status to change to Error, and we have to select those in SP01 and resend them to the print device.

These are random occurrences, and occur with random printers - there is seemingly no pattern to this behavior, only that it is triggered from our MRP job. We have upgraded several times to later versions of SAPSprint on SAP support's guidance, only to see the behavior continue.

When I try to format a cell in Excel - bolding, underlining, switching font size - the program freezes and I need to re-start. Is a new issue from last 2 days having worked without problems previously.

@Emiru Thank you. Thank you. I just had the same problem for the past 8 hours. I went in to set my default printer. I did not have one set. I had powered down my printer the night before. I set the default printer to the pdf option. It worked. Thanks, again.

@charlie1volley Very strange, but that does appear to work. I just changed my default printer to Microsoft PDF and the format cells no longer pauses/hangs Excel for 40-60 seconds. Great workaround, now let's see if the good folks at Microsoft can fix that one :)