Ideas? Print Spooler Corruption

[Randy C.]

Basically I've run out of ideas, so I figure give crowd sourcing a
shot...

Have an older Dell desktop, Win XP, Dell multifunction printer.
Relative's computer.

Problem:
Currently, you go to print anything and you get a memory read or write
error.
Alternatively, the print job will sit in the spooler forever and do
nothing, claiming
it's printing.

Printer worked before the problem, printer worked during the problem.
Mechanical
or printer side problem seems very unlikely. Everything it's doing
says Windows issue to
my spider sense...

Tried:
Reinstalling printer both with Dell's drivers, and the Windows update
drivers.
Wiping out the print spooler files, as they act corrupted (can't be
deleted) after a job freezes.
Restarting the spooler service.
A Windows repair.
System file check.
I can't set the printer properties to print directly instead of using
the spooler cause that option
is not available in the dialog box.
Probably some things I'm forgetting...

Funkiness:
I did get it to work after all of the above once, thought I had it
whipped, and after a reboot, it went
right back to the same old story.

The only thing I can think of that might have caused this, is I think
the system powered off prematurely
when it was doing some Windows updates. I'm not sure of this as the
relative lives in another state and I'm
remoting into it.

The only thing anyone has been able to tell me, is to reinstall
Windows. Which due to some
unique financial programs that we have no way of reinstalling should
Windows get wiped, isn't really an option.

We're currently trying to barrow another printer to test with.


Thoughts?

[Bill Piepmeyer]

Is this a USB connected printer?

I have seen a similar problem where a printer would get a different USB
port after a reboot and it would quit working. The driver was set to
USB0 from first install then after a reboot, the printer would enumerate
as USB1. So the orig config was set to USB0 and the printer had been
reinstalled on reboot as USB1 and therefore would not print and
everything would sit in the queue and claim to be printing as USB0 was
valid from initial installation but no printer there. The fix was to
simply change the printer port for the driver to USB1 and all was well
even after many reboots. Don't have any clue why it did this but the
fixed worked.

Hope this helps,

Bill

[Randy C.]

It is a USB printer, although I'm pretty sure I checked the port
assignments each time I reinstalled.

I'll check that again thanks.

[Brian Wagner]

Try a different USB cable? Google for an answer? Set the printer up
on another computer and see if it works there. If so it is a computer
issue, otherwise printer problem. Are you using the latest driver?

b

[Randy C.]

The printer works when you get the software out of the way, and was in
service for
a long time before this, the only thing that changed was the PC in
software. The cable
works.

Googling has already been performed, except there's about a billion
results on "print spooler" issues
that have nothing to do with this particular issue. I've tried some of
what I found that sounded logical.
Didn't help.

Already mentioned above that I tried the driver from Dell and from
Windows update, there are no other
drivers. This is one of those newer Dell built printers, not the old
rebadged ones. It's not as though I can
hop over to HP and get 5 different drivers from the last year
unfortunately.

Don't have another computer at the residence, but like I said we're
looking at borrowing an identical printer
and possibly another printer model to test with.

[Glenn Barrett]

Have you checked the event logs to see if there are any specific error messages? Is the print spooler service itself properly starting on boot?

[Greg Miller]

Install XP inside of a virtual machine and set up the printer
inside. Using something like VirtualBox, you'll be able to give the VM
access to the printer. After you have it printing inside the VM, you
can share it out and mount it "remotely" from the bare metal XP install
having the issue.

[Randy C.]

Have checked the event logs but I don't recall what the error was off
the top of my head.
Had it written down and can't seem to locate it now, will have to
check again. This has been
an off and on thing over the last couple months so it's a bit fuzzy.

@ Greg, not sure how well the machine will run that considering it's
age, but may end up being
a solution.

[Randy C.]

Just a note that I managed to resolve this mess by getting a driver 3
versions previous
to the current from Windows and Dell... and having to manually set
which files
to pick from during the driver install - otherwise the installer was
trying to pick from
the previous/existing driver files which I suspect are corrupted.

Took 3 attempts but it finally took hold. Wiped
out the restore points and created a new one after the initial working
test.
After a reboot, seems to work fine.

At least it's better than reinstalling windows.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Brian Wagner]

Situations like this add to my "job security"