How did this crap even leave beta testing?? Was Windows 7 even tested with a print server using HP printers and HP's Universal Print Driver?! Every SINGLE DAY, I've got at least one person coming to me, saying that: Microsoft Word is giving them some error about "a problem with the current printer setup" and they can't print. Word is showing them their printer is "offline", when it's obviously not (printers are never offline). Their application is hung after hitting "print" or submitting a print job. The program crashes when they try to print. Every single day, at least one of these issues comes up. And there is always one solution, that always fixes each of these problems. And it's the ONLY solution that actually works (can't add a printer, removing printer leaves a "ghost" printer behind, etc). Restart the print spooler service. (Sometimes also kill the splwow64.exe process which is hanging the applications and/or "problem with the current printer configuration) Is this acceptable to you?! Am I supposed to walk the users through how to restart the print spooler? I always have to go out to each computer and restart their spooler whenever this happens. And it seems to happen for no apparent reason... it's even come up a few times on my own PC at the office as well. There seems to be absolutely no pattern to the madness. I'm mostly frustrated that this is such a common and recurring problem, and yet the Windows "print troubleshooter" is completely and totally worthless... it checks that status of the print spooler as one of its "tests" and it never finds a problem with it. So the users are left with Windows shrugging and going "I don' see no stinkin' problem", and I'm left with no explanation other than to throw my arms up and shout "MICROOSOOOOOOOFFTTTTT!!!!"... Here are our specs. Windows 7 Pro x64 on all ~25 PCs, clean installs, less than a month old. Every computer was individually installed and configured from retail media, not imaged. The issue occurs nearly randomly for all users that print, even on the computers that came with Win7 from the OEM (some preloaded HP systems). Windows Server 2003 R2 as the AD domain controller and on the original print server Windows 7 Pro x64 as the "bug-testing" print server that was supposed to fix these problems (... it didn't) 4 HP printers sharing a single HP UPD (Universal Print Driver), a P2015DN, 4050, Color LaserJet 4700, and a P4014. 1 Canon imageRUNNER Advance C5051 I would love to know the setup of anyone that uses HP printers on their domain and hasn't had these sorts of problems.

Hi, Please try to update the printer drivers to the latest for test. If this issue persists, you could try the following steps to reset the spooler queue to check the result: 1. Open Services, and stop the Print Spooler service. 2. Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS, and open PRINTERS folder. 3. Delete all files in the PRINTERS folder until it is empty, and then close Windows Explorer. 4. Open Services, and start the Print Spooler service. Hope it helps. Alex ZhaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I would love to know the setup of anyone that uses HP printers on their domain and hasn't had these sorts of problems. Sure thing: don't use a server or workstation as a print server. All of your printers seem to be network-aware so try setting up the workstations to print directly to them using Windows LPR/LPD printer protocol. My printers are: Color Laserjet 4600n, Color Laserjet CP3525, Laserjet 2035n, Lexmark C510 (using HP Color Laserjet 4600 drivers), Xerox 8825 Laser Plotter (using HP Designjet 1050c drivers). I've also got a few other thrown in for good measure: 2 Laserjet 2200's, Laserjet 1320, Laserjet 6MP, Laserjet 1200, and finally a Laserjet 2420. These last are connected to little Netgear or Linksys print servers and I've never had an issue with the print spooler stopping or freezing on any of these.

It's an HP issue 100%. Read this story at gameaddict.eu You can blame MS for giving HP the digital signature for the driver. But it an HP driver issue. even if you try to talk to HP they will blatantly say it's microsoft's fault, and Microsoft will say it's the driver. Is catch 22. Just say no to HP products and you'll be fine. Aslo you could try to set up a Windows XP print Server, instead of 7, see where that takes you. Please do not forget to select the best answer if it helps you! The Ultimate computer newbie guide since the discovery of spoon feeding! The Computer Manual dot Com

@Alex: That's not a solution. These are clean systems with only the HP UPD installed, so this does not help (plus, I've tried reinstalling, it doesn't help). Why would you mark your own answer as "the answer" if you're having me "try" something?

@Bob: Tried that too. On our president's PC, he was getting the same issues with printing from MS Office 2010, so I got fed up with it and threw the sledgehammer at it. I connected the printers "directly" (via a direct network connection, not a shared printer) to the computer. A few days later the problem came up AGAIN. Later that day another person's computer was hanging in MS Word in the "print" menu (not responding) and, as usual, all I had to do was kill splwow64.exe and immediately Word sprang to life and was able to print again. Yes, to reiterate that: Word was hung... killed splwow64.exe... Word sprang to life and problem solved. Can't tell who to yell at there. Is it an HP thing because the spooler is hanging, or is it a Microsoft thing for allowing the spooler to hang without restarting or detecting it? Either way, it's not mine; everything I've been doing here is being done completely by the books. One worse, it seems that Office 2010 adds an additional layer of problems to the mess... if there is a printing problem, I can restart the spooler and it'll fix it for all OTHER programs, but Office often still keeps screwing up ("cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup") until I exit and re-open all Office programs. That's ridiculous... I just can't understand how this could possibly have left HP's "labs"...

I wonder if using a server and attaching the printer to the server might solve the problem. My MVP is for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT, and I am getting increasingly good with Visual Studio. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

Quote: Windows Server 2003 R2 as the AD domain controller and on the original print server Windows 7 Pro x64 as the "bug-testing" print server that was supposed to fix these problems (... it didn't) Already tried with and without a print server. Same crap.

Rather than use a Windows 7 x64 machine which does not allow for unlimited users of a printer hook the printer to the Serveer 2003 box My MVP is for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT, and I am getting increasingly good with Visual Studio. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

While I appreciate the intent to help, are you actually reading anything I'm writing? Again, quote: "Windows Server 2003 R2 as the AD domain controller and on the original print server" Print server 1 runs Server 2003. Print server 2 runs Windows 7 x64. Both systems are in a rack in the server room. Printers are connected via the network to the print server, so client computers sent the job to the server, which then sends it to the printer. Both servers seem to produce problems, however the computers set up with the Win7 print server seem to have fewer issues. After all, Windows 7 is designed to work with itself. And I haven't encountered any sort of user-limitations on the Win7 box either, and since it's just being used as a print server, it seems to work fine... in any context the term "fine" can apply, considering the situation.

Rack based servers, network attached printers. I am wondering if the printer servers are working OK with your servers. Typically network printers are printers with what used to be separate box hooked up to the LAN. So get me thinking that the printer might not like Windows 7 so good. I see you have a wide range of printers that are connected to your LAN. Windows 7 Windows for workgroups can share printers galore, USB allows a lot of printers. Server 2003 Windows server works the same way for sharing printers unless a policy for AD or something is in use. I have one LAN printer in my shop, but at present its USB connected as I am out of ports again. When I had less gear I used it fine with XP but since I moved to Windows 7 in my shop, its been on USB. I am wondering, have you you made any changes to your Server 2003 machine, I am assume it was working in the past before the Windows 7 machine was installed. My MVP is for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT, and I am getting increasingly good with Visual Studio. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

sigh I give up. It's not a problem about "the computers can't connect to the printer" like some kind of "I just read a book and wanted to get started in IT" guy. I know how to set up this stuff, and we've done everything by-the-books here. Official software, installed properly on all the computers, done the right way. The printers WORK. They work fine, they always print a test page (although I wish there was a "null print" option, where I can just test if the spooler/drivers are working right, but not produce a piece of paper)... The problem is that the drivers/spoolers on the computers randomly STOP working for no apparent reason, with no rhyme or reason, and almost always while printing from MS Office programs. That's what irritates me, that Office keeps having trouble with these printers, even though nothing has changed between "working" and "not working". I could understand if, maybe, we've installed some new software between A and B. Nope. All it is, is someone just prints something, prints something, prints something else, then tries to print again and it goes "derp, problem with the printer setup" (which hasn't changed), "derp, hang" (no notification? splwow64.exe just hangs any process trying to print), or "derp, no printer installed" (can we be serious?). Rebooting the computer ALWAYS fixes the problem, however we can't ask our users to reboot whenever the print spooler flips out.

I wonder if something in Windows update managed to mangle your print shop? My MVP is for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT, and I am getting increasingly good with Visual Studio. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

Nope... no updates. It just stops working throughout the day, then a restart of the print spooler (or splwow64.exe, the 32-to-64-bit print spooler adapter), and sometimes the printing application (MS Word or Excel pretty much 100% of the time), and it works again, no reboot needed. A reboot will always solve the problem but we try to avoid it. Five minutes ago I just got a call from a co-worker, "printer problem again", that's all he needed to say. Walked over there, here's what I did... - Excel 2010 was hung on the "print" page (not responding) - Fired up task manager, killed splwow64.exe - Excel sprung back to life - Tried printing, got a long-winded error about a problem with the printer setup (sometimes this happens; MS Office apps don't re-connect to the spooler after restarting it, it seems) - Closed Excel - Opened Excel and the same document - Printed again, this time it went through fine. That's standard fare for this office. It just crashes at random, and requires sysadmin intervention each time. That's the irritating part. I can't keep requiring the users to call me up every time their print spooler flips out. And you know what's worse? This time it wasn't an HP printer being printed to; it was a Canon UFRII driver. But I think it was affected by previous prints or interactions with the HP driver... :/

I use Office 2010 and I print from Excel regularly and its been fine with a USB connected HP inkjet. Before on my old Linux server, I had it hooked up on that and used it as a shared resource fine. I am thinking now that my current server has more resources I might move the printer back there. My other printer is from Brother and it has Ethernet capability but its a tad more work to use due to the network but it works fine. So given my experience, I suspect there is some problem more general that is affecting printing. What is curious is that your printers should be working fine, so it suggests some driver related issue. Try one printer off the Windows 7 box hooked up by USB and share it, and come back here and let me know if that works any better. My MVP is for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT, and I am getting increasingly good with Visual Studio. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

Did you ever found a solution to this issue? We have a customer with exactly the same issue's. The new Windows 7 64-bits HP desktops with MS office 2010 64-bit hang regular while printing from office apps. Other machines running Win32 don't have these issue's. Kill the splwow64.exe from task manager always solves the issue. Mark

I would love to see an answer to any underlying cause as well. Currently we are using 2008R2 as a print server, using UPD's from HP and only a few other drivers for those "unique" printers. Still we have regular issues with the printspooler and every time I think I have isolated the issue, there will be a problem that breaks the mould sorta speak and make me wonder why it didn’t fit the pattern and if my fix really was a fix or just luck. So far I know this: - Installing may printers over time on a client pc, will cause more issues over time. A clean driver file/registry reduces the errors exponentially. - Since we rebuild the printserver and went all UPD where we could, the issues diminished but did not go away completely. Next I am starting to look into printdriver isolation and see if that helps. http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2009/10/08/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-print-driver-isolation.aspx

Actually have the exact same problem with my printers on some 2008 R2s Terminal Servers. Got the printers installed by IP ports on them, fresh universal HP drivers (PCL6), and peoples starting to get nervous about that. My only workaround is to kill splwow64 when someone is stuck on offices screens while trying to print. Can't think of something good right now, as i'm not having new idea (we already upgraded to SP1 which was supposed to upgrade some printing issues, but it didn't help). Will try to follow that thread and hopefully find a solution.

Hello Here we have the same problem : Windows 7 64 bit + Office 2010 or Office 2007 + various hp printers => have to kill splwow64 to unfreeze office apps. print server : Windows 2003 R2 or Windows 2008 R2 same issue still looking for a real solution. Very disappointing.

I'm jumping on this thread. We have the exact same problem. We've actually had a case open with PSS for a couple weeks now. So far nothing. Print Server is 2008 R2 with about 20 various HP printers mostly using the upd. Workstations are Win7 x64 with Office 2010 x86. Symptoms are as stated above. When you try to print the option will be either greyed out or if you hit the print button the program will go non responsive. If in that state, you kill the splwow64.exe process, everything will come alive and printing will resume normally.

For those who are having printer problems with Server 2008R2 I suggest vising the server section where there are more users that can help. I have an HP printer and a Brother MFC and I have not had problems with them. I wonder if there is some issue on the server that is causing problems? My MVP is for the Windows Desktop Experience, i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT Remote Assistance is available for a fee. I am best with C++ and I am learning C# using Visual Studio 2010 Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

Exactly the same issue - UPD running via a print server (Windows 2008 R2) and clients running Win7 x64 with Office 2010 x32. It's an HP printer driver without any doubt, none of our other printers do this (Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Toshiba), in fact we can print better to the HP printers using the Konica Minolta drivers ... make of that what you will - only downside is that the extra printer functions like stapling and punching don't work properly (not suprising). We've reported this to our HP account manager and have heard nothing back, but given the ongoing problems we've had with HP responsiveness recently I'm not surprised (provided him with a link to this post as well). We're part of a major retail group in Australia so we're not small fry but HP seem to have been suffering from something recently, quality control on software seems lacking (the UPD drivers have been very poorly executed with some very weird behaviour between versions) and we've seen support suffer on our server and storage hardware as well. We've had networking kit fail and be replaced 3 times (for a switch!) and the failed switches were never collected (at $AU5000+ per switch). We are now switching from HP to KM printers as they seem to actually care, I just hope the server and storage side picks up as HP is definitely the best kit I've worked with in that area. Barry

I use Cisco switches as they have never annoyed me. As for HP printers, I have one or two of them, no problem. I wonder if the printer server you are using has some problem? I have my printers connected to my Windows Server machine as shared printers. My MVP is for the Windows Desktop Experience, i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT Remote Assistance is available for a fee. I am best with C++ and I am learning C# using Visual Studio 2010 Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

don't learn them, make a *.bat for stop and start printspooler

I have the same issue with toshiba printer/copiers. Spooler gets extremely confounded by particular drivers. Sometimes it crashes as soon as it starts. Spooler is tied to printer ui and windows won't let me work with or remove drivers that are crashing the spooler because the spooler is crashed. circular reasoning? And i'm not picking through folders and registry entries on an otherwise fresh install for something like this. Honestly, we're still losing productivity in 2011 because "I can't print". Anyway, my day is ruined just remembering the frustration I've endured at the hands of windows 7 spooler. So set up a a sensible UI that can DESTROY one or several instances of offending drivers and then restart the spooler.

I have had the same problem with splwow64 since my clean install of Windows 7 Pro 64bit. I have several network attached printers (no print server, just IP addressed) and I have tried multiple drivers to try to resolve this problem. Yep, Office (2003) apps claim that no printers are installed or just hang. I have to kill splwow64 process and all is good again. Other apps lockup as well -- quicken, etc. Some lockups are worse than others. This is EXTREMELY frustrating! The question is "what to do?" -- Just thought that I'd confirm your experience, and hope for a solution, 'cause I don't know what else to try.

It seems that I also have a similar problem. I have several Windows 7 x64 boxes and networked HP CP3525n. When we send printing jobs from word 2010 or Adobe Acrobat. The spooler randomly stopped. When it happened in Word 2010, Word was stuck until I reset the spooler. What I found is that the previously sent job is not cleared from the spool even after that printing job is completely done. I could clear it up when I turn off and on the printer. So now I am running to the printer several times a day. The printer driver was set automatically by Windows 7 when I specified the internet address of the printer, such as "http://10.1.2.3". One more thing. Today, just right before the lunchtime. it happened again. But since all my coworkers were calling me to join the lunch, I just left it behind. After 45mins lunch time, I found the not-cleared printing job was gone. Whom I have to blame about this? Is HP or Microsoft? Or Adobe?

I am having the same problem but without HP drivers. I have had multiple machines have printing issues (spooler) just forget how to print after working fine for a long time. I am in an multi-domain environment and am having problems with most of my Windows 7 machines. Each domain has a separate print server and both are using a different server os versions. Most of the time, I rebuild the users profile and it seems to fix the problems (fingers crossed), but I had a machine that now crashes an Office 2010 app if the spooler is running. I can manually restart the spooler and start office again and the same thing happens. If I leave the print spooler off, I can launch the apps just fine. Any insight would be good Jeff

Ah another thread about these - I'm joining in. Get exactly the same issue, I'll post what I've done so far which I've not seen here (I have tried to read it all, but on a tight time-scale) - may help in resolving this as MS/HP don't really seem to be on the case. So far, the spec's seem to be the same. server 2008 r2 print server, and server 2008 r2 terminal server where the issue lies. (Win 7 is basically the same as 2008r2 if you look at it in a broad sense) The facts. Killing splwow64.exe does the trick to bring the application back to life, but doesn't always let the user print until they log off/on again. Sometimes the spooler has to be restarted. Also get the HP BiDi msi errors throughout the day, these can be fixed but don't seem related. (See below) The fixes/workarounds. Very similar issues, or side effects of this one can be resolved by removing 32 bit office and installing 64bit office. Because the splwow64.exe essentially translates the 64bit os/print driver/whatever from a 32 bit application, changing office versions has reported to have fixed this. Good - but not great unless you're using a standard installation. Technically this doesn't fix the issue but eliminates the need for the faulting executable. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/officeitpro/thread/1756cf78-8b6c-44cf-99c7-5cf66f6c440e Another potential work around is to apply this fix. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983035 which seems to suggest if it breaks, it won't take out office with it and the user can still work - I'm going to install this today, not as a fix but to hopefully thin out the calls of 'my printer doesn't work again!' In the following link the description is interesting but not sure it's directly related. As stated above I've applied work around no.1 and the errors have gone but the splwow64 related crash is still there. Though it seems to have moved the crash from the spooler to the application. This isnt a fact, but more of an observation. Also I get WINWORD.exe crash logs with the faulting app of splwow64. http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01682861&dimid=1001553288&dicid=alr_mar09&jumpid=em_alerts/us/mar09/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category/alerts Unfortunately I can't change this system to 64 bit office yet, but I'm not sure it's going to help as one application requires the 2003 access runtimes (32 bit) and they still crash, taking out the rest of the office. I need to install the 2010 office patch to stop it disabling the printers but if they have to still log off and on then I'm no further forward. Hope this helps. Ian

Just wanted to stop in with another update here after these past 4 months... after the print issues settled down when I fully migrated the printers to the Windows 7 box, set up printer deployment via "Print Management" MMC on the server, and gutted the old Server 2003 box, things got *much* smoother. There were still issues, though, mostly centered around Excel and other Office applications - irony of irony. We never have problems printing from third party programs... only Microsoft apps. Sad. Windows 7 SP1 came out, and we've installed it on a good part of our PCs here (it's hard, since WSUS is way over-bloated overkill for our 25-user office) ever since it went RTM. It did solve some problems - specifically, strange print errors for Excel users with multiple files open. Those errors were completely isolated to Excel (the "problem with the current printer setup"), as any other application, even Word, could still print. Those errors are completely gone with Windows 7 SP1. Thank goodness. The issues we still deal with, though, are random splwow64.exe hangs. When splwow64.exe hangs, it holds up every program requesting to enumerate printers (like Office, IE, etc), without explanation. So the user opens another Word... and another... and another... trying to make it open. When I walk them through opening Task Manager and killing splwow64.exe, 10 Words tend to pop up when it comes back to life. I think I may have a lead on a cause, though, that might help developers or people that know how to access this subsystem... in the past, I'd found that the HP Universal Print Driver had a "sub-session" dialog box that would appear in Windows 7's protected "service session" and prompt for input or confirmation. In the distant past, I remember seeing a notification balloon pop up saying something like "A service is requesting your attention", you would click it and get transferred to an alternate display session (like the Windows 7 UAC secure desktop) where the dialog was located. Dismiss it, it would ask if you're done interacting with the service (I think it was called the "interactive service helper"?), and you'd go back to your desktop. I THINK this may be what's going on here, too. It makes sense: splwow64.exe is not using any CPU or extra memory, and it's not crashing... it just hangs, waiting for a response from something. Maybe that something is a dialog box we can't see, because Windows 7 is suppressing the notification or the secure desktop! It's entirely possible these dialogs are being generated by a dependent of the splwow64.exe process - perhaps it creates a 64-bit adapter thread somewhere that holds the HP UPD instance that's generating an invisible dialog? Window management is a funky thing... Maybe someone could shine some light on that?

I'm convinced it is an IE9 issue. Is that what you are using there?

I use FireFox in my shop as its more compliant that MS offerings My MVP is for the Windows Desktop Experience, i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT Remote Assistance is available for a fee. I am best with C++ and I am learning C# using Visual Studio 2010. My page on Video Card Problems is now my most popular landing page. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

IE8 here... still having the problem with Excel/Word most of the times.

I recently had a disk failure so I am using a clean install of Windows 7, seems the few issues I had are now gone. I still suggest often to backup and install Windows clean My MVP is for the Windows Desktop Experience, i.e. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 IT Remote Assistance is available for a fee. Visit my IT site for information. I am best with C++ and I am learning C# using Visual Studio 2010. My page on Video Card Problems is now my most popular landing page. Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Hardcore Games | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews

Similar problem here. Win 7 ultimate 64 with Office 2007 and a mix of HP (P2015dn running on ethernet) and Brother Laserjet printers. HP Printer worked fine for 3-4 months with no hangs etc. Approx 1 week after adding Brother 7840 ethernet printer the HP printer quits with a job in the queue. Restarting the spooler (splwow64.exe) doesnt work. Rebooting PC doesnt work either. I have to uninstall the printer and reload it and then it works until the pc is rebooted again. This is the same for either the HP UPD driver or the direct P2015 driver. After putting up with crappy HP drivers for several years I am about to dump all HP devices and to try to find something with domestic SW content (if any exist)

We are also having the same issue. Our printer services are running on Windows 2008 R2 servers in a clustered environment with the HP UPD driver 5.2.5. We havent started using the 5.2.6 yet as 5.2.6 it does not mention is resolves the issues and from experience it can create more problems that it can solve by updating drivers. All of the crashing occurs when printing from Office products (we are using 2010 primarily) and Internet explorer (version 8). This has been driving us crazy since UDP 5.2.0 (and probably earlier but 5.2.0 was when most of the calls started coming in) and we have had premier support calls with MS and also support calls with HP and neither has helped us. Our problems revolve around the splwow64 and also the spooler crashing. We're basically over it, pissed off to no return. We are going to create another HP call, only with the hope they release a UPD 3.0 sooner (hoping they will fix the problems in 3.0...). We also have many Toshiba printers and these do not cause any issue. Everytime the spooler crashes its the HP*109.dll that it the faulting application.