Anthony Curreri: IT Solutions

I had a Windows XP computer with an HP 1020 printer that would suddenly not print. The Printers and Faxes window was empty. If you go into the Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services and right-click Print Spooler, you’ll see the option to start is available, because the service is stopped. When I started the service, the printers appeared again but the service would stop again before I could do anything else.

In the event viewer, you’ll see the following error message:

Event ID 7031 or 7034
The Print Spooler service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

OR

Event ID 1004
Faulting application spoolsv.exe, version 5.1.2600.5512, faulting module ZSR.DLL, version 6.20.1625.0, fault address 0×0001f979.

First, I installed the hotfix here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953546. This didn’t seem to work, but I can’t believe that what I did next was all that was required to solve the problem.

1. Unplug the USB connection to the local printer, in this case an HP Deskjet 1020.
2. Restart the computer
3. The printers now show up, because the Print Spooler has stopped terminating unexpectedly!
4. Two printers had jobs in the queue, the unplugged local printer and a network printer. Clear all the print queues.
5. Reconnect the USB connection.
6. Restart, print stuff, everything should be working normally!

Let me know via comment or the contact tab at the top if this doesn’t solve your problem.

Update: Problem did return. I did the unplug the HP 1020’s usb connection trick to make the printers show up, deleted the old driver, and installed a new driver from HP. Seems to be working now.

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