spoolsv.exe eats CPU when docs sent to Document Image Writer (XP S

I mistakenly posted this in the wrong newsgroup...anyway, this is where it
belongs, I guess.

So, this is a beaut. I'm running XP with SP2. Because of one thing and
another, the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer (which I've never used)
became my system default printer, with the result that several print jobs got
mistakenly sent to it. I sent them to the right printer (a directly attached
printer) and thought no more of it, and shut the 'puter down. When I next
tried to boot, things got hung up at the point where Windows is loading
services that load on startup. I couldn't get anywhere, powered down, tried
a bunch of things, and eventually did the three-fingered salute as it was
booting to open the task manager.

What I discovered in task manager was that spoolsv.exe was consuming 99% of
the cpu, for no good reason that I could tell. I killed it; it came back a
few minutes later, I killed it again. As long as it was dead, all was well,
but every time it came back, same deal.

I couldn't find any info on it on the MS website, so I did some more
websearch, none of which pointed to the Image Writer -- they all involved
network printers, but all described the same symptoms otherwise. The
consensus seemed to be, "If you print to a networked printer that's hosed up,
spoolsv.exe loses its mind". This was a virtual printer rather than a
networked one (I'm guessing, I never used it), but I tried killing the jobs
that were in this queue, and all is now well. However, I'd just as soon not
get bit by this one again. Does anyone know anything more about this, if
there's a patch or what?

Thanks,

Uninstall or Disable the Document Image Writer.
--
Cari (MS-MVP)
Windows Technologies - Printing & Imaging
http://www.coribright.com/windows

"lbb" wrote in message
...
I mistakenly posted this in the wrong newsgroup...anyway, this is where it
belongs, I guess.

So, this is a beaut. I'm running XP with SP2. Because of one thing and
another, the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer (which I've never
used)
became my system default printer, with the result that several print jobs
got
mistakenly sent to it. I sent them to the right printer (a directly
attached
printer) and thought no more of it, and shut the 'puter down. When I next
tried to boot, things got hung up at the point where Windows is loading
services that load on startup. I couldn't get anywhere, powered down,
tried
a bunch of things, and eventually did the three-fingered salute as it was
booting to open the task manager.

What I discovered in task manager was that spoolsv.exe was consuming 99%
of
the cpu, for no good reason that I could tell. I killed it; it came back a
few minutes later, I killed it again. As long as it was dead, all was
well,
but every time it came back, same deal.

I couldn't find any info on it on the MS website, so I did some more
websearch, none of which pointed to the Image Writer -- they all involved
network printers, but all described the same symptoms otherwise. The
consensus seemed to be, "If you print to a networked printer that's hosed
up,
spoolsv.exe loses its mind". This was a virtual printer rather than a
networked one (I'm guessing, I never used it), but I tried killing the
jobs
that were in this queue, and all is now well. However, I'd just as soon
not
get bit by this one again. Does anyone know anything more about this, if
there's a patch or what?

Thanks,

See if anything in this discussion string helps

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/sho...&tf=0&pageid=0

"lbb" wrote in message
...
I mistakenly posted this in the wrong newsgroup...anyway, this is where it
belongs, I guess.

So, this is a beaut. I'm running XP with SP2. Because of one thing and
another, the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer (which I've never
used)
became my system default printer, with the result that several print jobs
got
mistakenly sent to it. I sent them to the right printer (a directly
attached
printer) and thought no more of it, and shut the 'puter down. When I next
tried to boot, things got hung up at the point where Windows is loading
services that load on startup. I couldn't get anywhere, powered down,
tried
a bunch of things, and eventually did the three-fingered salute as it was
booting to open the task manager.

What I discovered in task manager was that spoolsv.exe was consuming 99%
of
the cpu, for no good reason that I could tell. I killed it; it came back a
few minutes later, I killed it again. As long as it was dead, all was
well,
but every time it came back, same deal.

I couldn't find any info on it on the MS website, so I did some more
websearch, none of which pointed to the Image Writer -- they all involved
network printers, but all described the same symptoms otherwise. The
consensus seemed to be, "If you print to a networked printer that's hosed
up,
spoolsv.exe loses its mind". This was a virtual printer rather than a
networked one (I'm guessing, I never used it), but I tried killing the
jobs
that were in this queue, and all is now well. However, I'd just as soon
not
get bit by this one again. Does anyone know anything more about this, if
there's a patch or what?

Thanks,