Last week I went to print a Word document from my computer and was a little surprised to see there are no printers in the Print dialog box!
Then I decided to go to Control Panel, Printers and Faxes and was even more surprised to see that it was completely empty!
I clicked Add Printer and got the message:
The Print Spooler service ended unexpectedly
After about an hour and a half, I was finally able to print again. In this article, I am going to follow the steps I followed to get my printer back up and running. The solution can help you if you have any of the following types of problems:
- You receive the error message “The Print Spooler service was terminated unexpectedly.”
- You find that the printer and Faxes window is empty and there are no printers in the list.
- When you try to print from a specific program, you get a message that no printers are installed
If you experience any of these symptoms on your computer, follow the instructions below and hopefully you will start typing again soon! Also read my other articles on how to clear the print queue in Windows and how to manually delete the printer.
Fix print spooler service error
Step 1. If the print spooler service is not already stopped, stop it. You can do this by selecting Start, Run and typing Services.msc. Then scroll down to the Print Spooler Service, right-click and select Stop.
Step 2. Now you want to delete any old print jobs that may have got stuck in the print queue. Sometimes a bad print job can also cause the print spooler service to crash.
Go to C: WINDOWS system32 spool PRINTERS and delete any files or folders listed there. You can try going back to services.msc and starting the print spooler service to see if that solved your problem.
In my case, this did not happen because the drivers for one of my printers were corrupted.
Step 3. Be sure to stop the Print Spooler service again before continuing. First, we will have to manually remove the corrupted drivers from the Windows registry. You can do this by going here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control Print Environments Windows NT x86 Drivers
In my case, the Lexmark 7600 Series driver was the only printer I installed, so I knew this was causing the problem. I went ahead and deleted the entire key called “Lexmark 7600 Series”.
Step 4. Now try to re-enable the Print Spooler service. Before I removed the driver from the registry, what happened to me was that every time I turned on the print spooler service, it just stopped whenever I tried to access printers and faxes or tried to print anything.
Once I uninstalled the corrupted driver, I was able to start the Print Spooler service and it continued to work even when I went to Printers and Faxes. Now you are practically back in business.
Step 5: Make sure you uninstall the printer software from your PC. In my case, the Lexmark printer had a toolbox installed, etc. I also had to completely uninstall it before I could reinstall the printer.
Step 6: After removing the corrupted driver from the registry and uninstalling the software that came with the printer, you can reinstall the printer. In my case, I just used the CD that came with the printer to install it again. You can also download the driver from the manufacturer’s website.
After all this, I was finally able to print again! Not an easy process, but it works. Therefore, if you are having problems with the Print Spooler service, this should fix your problem. If not, leave a comment here and I’ll try to help! Enjoy!
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