2.7.1.1 Abnormal Termination of the Print Spooler Service

This problem is typically caused by a malfunctioning plug-in module, such as an IHV-supplied printer driver. Other causes include internal malfunction of the print spooler service and sudden loss of system power. The print spooler service terminates immediately without an orderly shutdown. The system attempts to restart the print spooler service multiple times before giving up, at which point administrative intervention locally on the system experiencing the failure is required to diagnose the problem and take corrective action.

All print jobs that are completely submitted at the time of failure remain queued, and their processing is restarted from the beginning on print spooler restart.

Print clients are not informed of an abnormal termination event, and experience failures on currently executing calls and all subsequent calls that are made through member protocols. Print clients implement appropriate RPC rundown handlers to free RPC resources that are associated with handles and are in use at the time of failure. Print clients retry those failed calls until the print server is available again.

In a system configuration in which printer drivers are run by the print spooler in the print spooler's address space, an abnormal termination or memory corruption in a printer driver can abnormally terminate the print spooler process.

In a system configuration in which printer drivers are run in isolation processes, commonly called a sandbox,<11> a malfunctioning printer driver causes only the isolation process to terminate. Print clients are not informed of such a failure. All current completely submitted print jobs for all printer drivers sharing the terminated isolation process remain queued, and their processing is restarted from the beginning on restart of the isolation process. The print spooler attempts to restart the isolation process for a malfunctioning printer driver two times before giving up. In this case, locally on the system that experiences the failure, administrative intervention is required to diagnose the problem and to take corrective action.