Spooler Service seems to hang domain controller

[greenjf]

Hello, and thanks for any insight on this issue.

I am on an enterprise network work with several servers running Win2000 Adv Srvr, not all but some of these servers experienced the following issue. Server is sluggish or unresponsive, Server cannot be accessed via terminal services, Hangs at login, and Users cannot print to any printer on the server. The fix was to cold boot the server, login and stop the spooler service. Immediately the server is responsive and seemingly back to normal minus the printing. After restarting the spooler service users could not print, had to remove all current printers and print drivers. After warm boot created and use new printers and drivers. My question is what caused this?

Edited February 21, 2006 by greenjf

[jondercik]

Dont use a domain controller as a print server.

[cluberti]

A print driver, processor, or monitor is always the culprit. Are you using 3rd party print drivers, or the inbox ones from Microsoft?

I strongly suggest using printmig to back up your configuration, running cleanspl.exe to clear the print spooler of all non-Microsoft items, then running printmig again to restore the back up and get your printer working again. If you have any version 2 print drivers, UPGRADE THEM NOW. Those are kernel-mode drivers from the NT4 days, and they can and will crash or hang a Windows 200x server. Upgrade to version 3 drivers ASAP to avoid issues like this.

Printmig.exe:

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003...igrator3.1.mspx

Cleanspl.exe:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

I do also second the question - why are you running print queues on a DC? The print spooler requires a lot of resources when printing, and this can affect how the DC runs due to the fact that the lsass process on a DC also requires a lot of resources, but all of the time. You can get race conditions and server hangs on a busy DC that is also a print server. Consider moving your print operations to a different machine - if you can't dedicate a server to printing, at least don't use a DC .

Edit: I can't spell.

Edited February 21, 2006 by cluberti