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Old September 19th 08, 05:59 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax
Alan Morris [MSFT]
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Posts: 783
Default Print Spooler Errors/Problems-You Wont BELIEVE The Cause

shd is the spooler scheduling file. It contains data about the job title,
the print driver, and the printer. It's partly text based and you can open
this file in notepad.

the slp file is the actually print data. It's been this way for over 15
years. I think that's older than Shock Wave.

Most likely there is a job scheduled to the MS Document Writer (whatever MS
Office installs for a printer) and a job was printed to this printer that
does not exist and was stuck in a loop until you deleted the job, the
spooler no longer did was it is coded to do with the data, send to GDI for
rendering to the print device.



--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base he
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"ViperCag" wrote in message
...
Hey California4x4

Thanks for this !! - I think you have just saved my life.

I have had nothing but dramas over the last week with HP Printers, and my
Spooler !! - I have been on the phone to Microsoft & HP - & nothing !!

So when I saw your post, I followed the instructions, - and low & behold,
there in the PRINTER folder, were three Shockwave files !!!!

THese are now deleted, and I am hoping that everything should be back to
normal !!

Cheers

"California4x4" wrote:


--
California4x4

Suddenly my printers stopped working, all of them, and the scanner, my
system started to bog down and I got SPOOLSV.EXE errors. I did
CheckDisks, I
did Mem Checks, I scanned for Viruses and Trojans, cleaned up the
Registry,
did a CHKDSK /R from the XP install CD... nothing! Then I did some more
research and came up with the cause and the solution which you WILL want
to
know about.

I saw a blog entry about wiping out the contents of
windows\system32\spooler
but thought that a bit drastic. However. I went into that folder and
started looking around.

In windows\system32\spool\printer I found two files that did NOT belong
there. How they got there is anyone's guess. They we 0002.SPL and
0002.SHD, both of which are Shockwave Flash objects.

When I deleted these (and it took some doing) EVERYTHING returned to
normal.

Apparently the Spooler does NOT know what to do with these file types in
the
..\printer folder (understandable) so it kept chewing and chewing and
chewing
and chewing on them to the point where I couldn't bring up my list of
printers, couldn't reinstall printer drivers, kept getting DeviceIO
Notification popups, constantly got SPOOLSV.EXE "could not read" memory
error
instructions, and so forth during shutdown attempts.

So, the moral is, when you are having weird Spooler errors, check out
your
windows\system32\spool\printer folder and look for "weird" stuff.

Hope this helps and I hope MS sees this and fixes their Spooler so it
won't
chew away forever on "weird" objects.



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