Win7 print spooler service keeps stopping

[dpowell]

I've noticed that when attempting to install printers from network shares I frequently run into problems which lead to having to continuously restart the Print Spooler service until I finally get the printer installed. Also, when copying from one Win7 profile to another the printers installed on the profile I'm copying from tend to corrupt once the profile is copied causing me to have to recreate them from scratch. Why is this some much more problematic than it was in XP and, more importantly, does anybody have any tips to improve the situation?

[lurk&jerk]

I've noticed that when attempting to install printers from network shares I frequently run into problems which lead to having to continuously restart the Print Spooler service until I finally get the printer installed. Also, when copying from one Win7 profile to another the printers installed on the profile I'm copying from tend to corrupt once the profile is copied causing me to have to recreate them from scratch. Why is this some much more problematic than it was in XP and, more importantly, does anybody have any tips to improve the situation?

I have experienced same problem and was never able to ID the cause. As a bandage, I made a context menu entry to start and stop the printer spooler by right-clicking on the desktop. Autoscript code:

 RunWait(@ComSpec & ' /c net stop spooler')
RunWait(@ComSpec & ' /c net start spooler') 

And here's the registry code to launch the script from the desktop right-click menu

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Spooler]
"Icon"="c:\\PATH2ICON\\Printer.ico"
"Position"="Top"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\Spooler\command]
@="C:\\PATH2AUTOIT SCRIPT\\PrintSpooler.au3"

Edited January 22, 2011 by lurk&jerk

[cluberti]

Or, use procdump from sysinternals to get a dump of the spooler service crashing, and then zip or rar it up, upload it somewhere, and we'll take a look. Band-aids are fine for temporary pain relief, but actual answers and fixes are much better long term. A crashing spooler likely means a misbehaving print driver, so identifying the root cause shouldn't be too hard.