Pegasus, thanks for your feedback! Much appreciated!
We have had a couple of instances in which the support technician was
fortunate enough to gain access to the computer, delete those spooled job and
find the system recovers nearly 100% (back to normal).
Of the possible other culprits suggested I look for, we have:
Symantec Antivirus 10
No or very little/almost no reported or detected malware
No virus scanner (except Symantec)
No third-party firewall (on desktops)
No or rare use of CD burning applications
and...
File cataloging; what's that?!?
So it seems indications towards the print spooling subsystem(s) remain the
most likely cause. However, many of our systems do employ full disk data
encryption and we feel certain they are more likely to have errors (resulting
in BSoD) with the encryption than without.
--
DISCLAIMER: My opinions and comments are mine alone and do not represent
any other person or organization, living or dead. This includes any
government organization, DoD contractor.
"Pegasus (MVP)" wrote:
> I think it is by a leap of your imagination to point the finger at
> the print spooler while looking for the culprit that ties up your
> machines. I think it is far more likely that some non-native
> process does the damage. In the past I have traced such
> problems to any of the following:
> - Virus infections
> - Malware/adware/spyware infections
> - Virus scanners
> - Third-party firewalls
> - CD burning software
> - File cataloging applications
>
> Your challenge will be to identify the culprit. Lauching the Task
> Manager and spotting the task that consumes more than 90%
> of the CPU time would be a good starting point. Disabling non-
> core tasks via msconfig.exe is another, disabling non-MS
> services is a third.
>
>
> "Dennis C. Jr., Virginia Beach, VA"
> <DennisCJrVirginiaBeachVA@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:47B3AE86-310E-4856-B07D-16E4B9776222@microsoft.com...
> > Pegasus,
> > I am looking at the idea of having a batch file like this run in
> > conjunction
> > with one of the following activities:
> >
> > Startup, Login (Unlock), Logout (Lock) or Shutdown
> >
> > We seem to have run into a regular occurrence of computers going to 100%
> > resource utilization and where the employee logs into their system, gets a
> > desktop wallpaper displayed and then can do NOTHING else! Done! End of
> > story.
> >
> > So it seems like there needs to be a "clean-up sweep" of print spooler
> > related activities before / during /after something in our environment or
> > users' profiles; we do have some "unique" program printing reports via
> > pdfFactory through a Remote Desktop Connection application. I am
> > suspecting
> > something about this chain-of-programs-through-connections is inherently
> > "unstable" and occasionally for whatever programmatic reason, a print job
> > isn't finishing the way it should (or is being spawned as a 'background'
> > process the user has no knowledge of).
> >
> > The users just come to us with statements like, "My computers dead" or
> > "There's something wrong and I have no idea..." without error messages or
> > any
> > recollection of having done something that could have initiated this
> > problem.
> >
> > How can a background service such as a Print Spooler be permitted to
> > hogtie
> > the resources of an entire operating system? Is it a combination of
> > unforeseen applications chained together and their dependencies upon each
> > other that causes these systems to end up in a chinese finger trap?!?
> >
> >
> > --
> > DISCLAIMER: My opinions and comments are mine alone and do not represent
> > any other person or organization, living or dead. This includes any
> > government organization, DoD contractor.
> >
> >
> > "Pegasus (MVP)" wrote:
> >
> >> "eljainc" <eljainc@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> >> news:1194903670.218333.61390@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> >> > I am running into a problem where I print to an HP LaserJet 5 printer
> >> > using HP's driver, not Microsofts. I have the latest PCL5 driver
> >> > installed.
> >> >
> >> > I am also using the USB Printing support which is installed by
> >> > Belkin's F5U002 (USB to Parallel converter). Printing works quite well
> >> > a good deal of the time. Every now and then I will get a print job
> >> > that gets stuck in the print queue (when I double click the icon it
> >> > says Printing). I can select to restart the print job, pause and
> >> > unpause but it does nothing. I have tried
> >> >
> >> > net stop spooler
> >> > net start spooler
> >> >
> >> > from a cmd prompt, and that does not work.
> >> >
> >> > I have tried to turn off the printer and turn it on again, disconnect
> >> > the USB-Parallel device and replug it. Nothing. I've tried
> > ~{snip}~
> >> > Thanks
> >> > Mike McWhinney
> >> >
> >>
> >> Stopping/Starting the print spooler won't do you much good.
> >> Try running this batch file next time it happens:
> >> @echo off
> >> echo.
> >> echo Purging the print queue . . .
> >> net stop Spooler
> >> echo Deleting all print jobs . . .
> >> ping localhost -n 4 > nul
> >> del /q %SystemRoot%\system32\spool\printers\*.*
> >> net start Spooler
> >> echo Done!
> >> ping localhost -n 4 > nul
> >>
> >
>