Top Choices for June 2009...   VIPRE Antispyware+Antivirus — 15 day free trial   Sunbelt Personal Firewall — 30 day free trial   NetZero Dialup — Free 10 hrs /month   HostGator Web Hosting — Initial Purchase 20% Off   Acronis True Image Home 2009

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.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 Complete PC Backup and Restore software terryscomputertips.com/Acronis

Acronis True Image Home 2009 Complete PC Backup and Restore software terryscomputertips.com/Acronis

GoToMeeting 30 Day Free Trial Plus $10 Off - Host Online Meetings terryscomputertips.com/Meeting Ads by Terry

 

Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!

<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/printing-problems-with-the-print-spooler-service.php">Printing Problems with the Print Spooler Service</a>

Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.