Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
January 28, 2007

Volume 2, Number 33 — Sunday, January 28, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

3.  Printing Problems with the Print Spooler Service

Subscriber Jerry Munn wrote this week to ask about a problem where he couldn't print from his Windows XP computer.

Also, can you tell me where to go to restar my printer spooler. We had several power failures this weekend and I no longer have any printer info on one of my computers. When I try to reinstall the printer drivers I get a message that I need to restart my printer spooler. I cannot do this. Help if you can.

Thanks,
Jerry Munn

The Windows Print Spooler is a Windows XP "Service". You can start it via the following steps:

1. Click on the Start button
2. click on Run
3. enter "services.msc" without the quotes and press Enter
4. Scroll down to Print Spooler
5. Single-Click on Print Spooler
6. The details will open in the middle of the window.
   • It probably shows Start -- if so, Start it.
   • If it shows Stop and Restart, I suggest Stop it, then Start it.

I received a followup email from Jerry...

Terry,

Thanks for the news letter and info on restarting my print spooler. I followed the steps outlined, however, I received the following error message. "Could not start the print spooler on local computer. Error 1068. He dependency service or group failed to start." What next? You may email me back at [email address removed].

Thanks
Jerry Munn

My initial answer to Jerry was that he should go to the same place, double-click on PrintSpooler instead of single clicking.

Click on the Dependency tab.

You've managed to disable some Windows serivice is required for the Print Spooler.

Sounds like you've been making changes to services based on some security lists on the Internet. They may be right, but only within the parameters that the author wants to consider. Often, you'll find that something you like to do no longer works. Murphy's Law.

In this case, it's the Remote Procedure Call service.

Upon further communication with Jerry, it turns out that he had two services on which the print spooler service depended. One was the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service. The other was a service installed by his Lexmark printer. He checked it and changed it to automatically start — and all was well.

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4.  Finding the Outlook Express Address Book

Subscriber Jerome Safer wrote this week with trouble importing addresses from Excel into Outlook Express:

Terry,
I am trying to help a friend Import some contacts from Excel into Outlook Express or Outlook. I have studied the Import and have done a test import of a .csv file from Excel into Outlook Express and it worked until it hit an Error.

I am trying to find out where the Address Book file is stored On the computer. I thought the type was something like *.wab but I have not found it yet in any searches. I want to back up the Address book before doing the Import in case there is any problem with the Import.

Can you help me find the Address Book file?

Regards,
Jerome Safer
Birmingham, AL.
I receive your tips newsletter on a regular basis.

Jerry's having problems finding the Outlook Express address book. He was on the right track, in that Outlook Express stores it in a .wab file, as he expected. However, the directory is one of the "hidden" directories in Windows.

One way to find files in hidden directories is via the Windows Explorer "Search" options. You can tell Search to search the hidden directories also. It's found in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserID]\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book replace [UserID] with your user ID.

[See article 7 in this issue HOWTO: Searching using Windows Explorer's Search Functions.]

Outlook, on the other hand, has data it calls Contacts, which are stored within the .PST data files. These PST files also have messages in them -- they're not just an address book.

Outlook used to have .PAB files (Personal Address Book files). These are no longer created by current versions of Outlook.

So, it sounds like his easiest route is to import them into Outlook Express (after figuring out what his error was and getting it solved) and then, from OE, export them to be imported into Outlook's Contacts.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 33 — Sunday, January 28, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.