The print spooler is an application on your Windows operating system that manages all the print jobs that are sent to the printers or print server. This program will allow a user to delete print jobs, or manage them by pausing, restarting or changing the priority of certain print jobs that are waiting to be printed.
If there are problems with the print spooler service it usually means that a printer driver is defective or corrupt. If this occurs, the print spooler service may not run and you will not see anything in your Printers and Faxes folder. You will also not be able to add or remove and printers while the print spooler service is not running.
Be sure that you always install only the printer drivers that are intended for your operating system. If you are using a more current operating system such as Windows Vista, be sure to check carefully for the proper drivers on the companies website if they are not provided on the CD you have received with the printer. Also be sure that if you are upgrading your operating system, that you uninstall all printers and printer drivers before performing the upgrade to prevent problems resulting from the wrong version of printer drivers.
If the print spooler service is not running, you will not be able to uninstall any printers using the Control Panel or the Printers and Faxes window. One option for completing this task is to download and run the clanspl.exe utility that is found in the Windows Resource Kit Tools. This program does and excellent job of removing print spooler items, but will not remove the print spooler service dependency on any Lexmark services. You can use this program remotely to remove the print spooler items on another computer remotely and when you run the utility, it will ask you if you would like to remove a few things that are installed by default in Windows. It is recommended that you answer No to these questions.
Once you have successfully cleaned up the print spooler on your computer using the cleanspl.exe utility, you should be able to reboot your computer and then reinstall any printers that you wish to use. Be sure that you are careful when selecting the printer drivers so that you do not install any drivers that are not intended for the operating system that you are using.
If you are having problems with the cleanspl.exe utility, or enjoy managing things on your own, there are a few excellent tutorials that can be found online to help you clean up the print spooler on your own. Just be careful when performing these steps as some of them involve editing the Windows registry, which can cause more problems if it is not done correctly.
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