Print Spooler (spoolsv.exe) crashes repeatedly – find corrupt/unsupported drivers

If you find that your print spooler service continuously crashes or won’t even start at all, it could be due to an unsupported or corrupted printer driver. To help determine what the cause of the issue is, you will need to do the following.

  1. Download Windows Debugging Tools SDK from this location and install them to a location you’ll remember.
  2. Create a folder on your C: drive named debug.
  3. Open a command prompt change directory to the folder where you installed the debugging tools.
  4. Change directory again to “Debuggers\x86.” (Note: This location may change depending on operating system. You are looking for the file location of adplus.exe.)
  5. Run the following command: adplus -crash -pmn “spoolsv.exe” -o C:\debug.
  6. Start the Print Spooler service.

The adplus command will wait for the print spooler service to start then attach itself to it for debugging purposes. When the service crashes, it will create a folder inside of C:\debug with a date/timestamp similar to this: 20120807_095027_Crash_Mode. Inside of that folder will be a couple of log files. Examine the log files and search for verify. In my case, it found the following line: *** WARNING: Unable to verify checksum for C:\Windows\System32\XRZWSLAI.DLL. Next, we need to delete the printer and drivers from the registry.

To delete the printer and drivers from the registry, do the following:

  1. Open the registry editor.
  2. Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\ (Note: If you’re running the 64-bit version of Windows, the registry location will most likely be Windows x64 rather than Windows NT x86.)
  3. There will be a subkey Version-2 or Version-3 depending on your operating system.
  4. Export the registry key before deletion to ensure you have a backup.
  5. Delete the appropriate key that relates to the corrupt/unsupported driver.
  6. Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers.
  7. Export the registry key before deletion to ensure you have a backup.
  8. Delete the appropriate key that relates to the printer.
  9. Start the Print Spooler service.

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