printer
Printers = Hate
Monday, January 5th, 2009 | Tech Help | Comments Off
A user reported an issue with her printer this afternoon. Whenever she tried to print it locked up her PC. I tried all my usual tricks to hack out the offending job, but nothing I tried was working. The print spooler would crash seconds after starting. This error kept taunting me:
“Spoolsv.exe – Application Error”
“The instruction at “0×77fcc2c0″ referenced memory at “0×00000000″.
“The memory could not be written.”
I popped out my trusty Troubleshooting Swiss Army Knife (read: Google) and quickly had another tool to fight the tenacious spooler.
It turns out the most common cause of the error is an abundance of .SHD and .SPL files in the spool directory. These files are created by the spooler to save the spooled data of a print job. The .SPL file comprises drawing commands and the .SHD file comprises job settings information of the print job.
To fix spoolsv.exe application error, you will have to remove these files from the system. To do this, perform the following steps on your Windows XP computer:
- Open Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance, select Administrative Tools and then select the Services option.
- In the Services management console, locate the Spooler services, right-click on it and select Stop.
- Next, open the C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Printers folder. (Here, we are assuming that your Windows is installed in the default C:\Windows folder)
- Delete all the .SHD and SPL files from this folder.
- Next, open the TMP folder and delete all old and unused files from this folder.
- Finally, restart the Spooler service from the Services management console.
Just like that the users printer problems disappeared.
Print Head Cleaning…
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 | Tech Help | Comments Off
Our Canon MP390 has been printing black text poorly for a weeks. Running the cleaning application did nothing to help the poor prints. Luckily the MP390 has a removable print head. Unlike most other printer manufacturers, Canon does not build print heads into the new ink cartridges. Instead of paying for a new print head I popped it out and took it to the sink. A few minutes running under warm/hot water flushed it out. I then used a paper towel to get most of the water off of it. Make sure to not rub the print head, dab it onto a paper towel only. A can of compressed air does a good job of getting the last few droplets off the print head. After reinserting the ink cartridges, a few print head cleanings, an alignment and the printer was back printing like when it came out of the box.
Removing Printers with a Machete…
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 | Tech Help | Comments Off
As a sys admin, the bane of my existence are printers. In fact I think I could make a list on how I hate them so, but that is for another time. Back to the story. In the past month I have had to take out my machete, enter the deep dark jungle of the registry and hack out all reference to printers and printer servers , twice. › Continue reading
Installing Printers for All Users
Thursday, September 14th, 2006 | Tech Help | Comments Off
Do you ever get tired of installing the department printer for each user of a PC? Has your attempts to educate your users ended in frustration? Well thanks to a neat little tool built right into Windows, your troubles are over. › Continue reading
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