Can you modify Spooler Service recovery settings via GPO or registry merge?

[Bruce Lautenschlager]

I notice that in in Windows XP, Microsoft wisely seems to have configured
the print spooler service to restart if it crashes.

Unfortunately, I've still got about 1000 Windows 2000 PCs on my domain, and
it seems like when I update a (or more correctly, install a new) driver on
my Windows 2003 Print Server, it likes to update EVERY network printer on
EVERY PC, even if the models and drivers aren't even the same (thank you
very little, HP).

When that happens, about 10% of the PCs crash their spooler service, until
they think they've updated ALL of their printer drivers (even though, again,
their 9050, 4600, and 4000 drivers didn't change a wink just because some
a--hole started purchasing P4015's and now we have yet another crapass HP
driver on our server).

Anyone know of any way to change the spooler service to recover
automatically via GPO or registry hack? I know it's a band-aid (I'm thinking
of reverting to only using HP 4 drivers...seriously) - but it would really
help.

Thanks,
Bruce

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

use the sc (service control) command line tool in XP+

sc \\remotemachine failure spooler reset= 143000 actions= restart/60000

I tried this against Win2k and it set the service to restart after 1 minute
on failure.

I did not find sc.exe on Win2k.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Bruce Lautenschlager" <brucel....@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:%23%23Cw8lsO...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[Bruce Lautenschlager]

Great - thanks very much (once again), Alan.

Bruce

"Alan Morris [MSFT]" <ala...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uMW56NvO...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

cool. I did not realize you were a repeat offender.

there is also a relatively new general server group for other server centric
queries
microsoft.public.windows.server.general.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Bruce Lautenschlager" <brucel....@pobox.com> wrote in message

news:%23Xx2En5...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

[Bruce Lautenschlager]

But when I think of spoolers, I think of you...:)

And fortunately, SC.EXE is part of the Win2k Resource Kit, which is on all
of our images...

Thanks again,
Bruce

"Alan Morris [MSFT]" <ala...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:uC6VyXdP...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...