Category Archives: Windows 7

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.

Autologon Domain-Joined Windows 2008 R2 Server

When a workstation/server is joined to a domain, it hides the checkbox for “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” from the userpasswords2 control panel.

To get autologon working, you need to restore this functionality by running the following from a command prompt to add a registry key:

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon” /v AutoAdminLogon /t REG_SZ /d “1” /f

Once that is done, it is recommended to run the following from a command prompt to add a registry key to specify the default logon domain:

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon” /v DefaultDomainName /t REG_SZ /d “domain” /f

After both registry keys have been added, launch the userpasswords2 (Start->Run->control userpasswords2) and click “OK.” to set the username/password you want to autologon with.

Please note: This tip also works for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

Offline Files fail to synchronize when moving to new server

You may experience a time when you move file servers due to restructuring or perhaps your old file server dies. You change the folder redirection paths to the new server, but offline files still tries to replicate from the old, non-existent server. To resolve this, you need to format the offline files database on your PC. This will remove the cached files database and old server references and fix your issue.

To format the offline file database open a command prompt and run the following command to add the necessary registry key to your PC and reboot.

REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache” /v FormatDatabase /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f