{"id":2703,"date":"2011-02-25T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T08:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=2703"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:49:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:49:43","slug":"the-most-irritating-error-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=2703","title":{"rendered":"The Most Irritating Error Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week one of my computers refused to print. The error was that the Spooler Service had stopped. Not a single printer was recognized. No new printer could be installed. The Spooler Service would stop and stop and stop and nothing could print. Ever.
\n
\nHaving written the Troubleshooting & Maintaining Your PC For Dummies All-In-One Desktop Reference For The Rest of Us<\/em>, I figured I’d have a good shot at fixing the problem. I just didn’t figure that it would take me five days to do it.<\/p>\n

I started, as I recommend in my book, with a System Restore. The problem: System Restore failed.<\/p>\n

Certainly it’s odd that System Restore fails. That generally means, as far as I’m concerned, that there is something more seriously wrong with the computer than the Spooler Service error.<\/p>\n

Next I ran the System File Checker. It found no problems.<\/p>\n

Being suspicious, I ran the SFC in Safe Mode. Still, no problems. So I restarted and tried a System Restore again. Failed.<\/p>\n

I figured the problem might be with the printer itself. All my printers are HP so I tried connecting an old Epson I had. Same problem.<\/p>\n

Now generally I like HP stuff. I have lots of HP printers here. I’m not entirely<\/a> happy with them. And I absolutely detest using HP’s tech support. Face it: I didn’t want to talk for 45 minutes with someone from India who is merely reading “solutions” from a manual.<\/p>\n

Thus ended the First Day.<\/p>\n

On the Second Day, I went to the store and bought a Windows 7 upgrade. After researching the Spooler Service problem on the Internet, I discovered that it seemed to be primarily a problem with Windows XP and Windows Vista. Perhaps the upgrade would fix things.<\/p>\n

Long story short: It didn’t. The problem I had with the Spooler Service in Windows Vista was inherited with Windows 7.<\/p>\n

Thus ended the Second Day.<\/p>\n

On the Third Day I discovered that Windows 7 had 60 updates pending. I tried to install them for about three hours. (Now that’s not all I did; I was bouncing back and forth between the problem PC and my other computers.) After a while, I checked the logs. Sure enough: All 60 upgrades failed.<\/p>\n

So I sat at the computer and manually installed each update. Eventually I installed them in batches. All told, it took me about six hours to successfully install all the Windows 7 updates and patches.<\/p>\n

Thus ended the Third Day.<\/p>\n

On the Fourth Day, I broke down, swallowed my pride, and called the PC Live help line. Rather than overpay for the Geek Squad, I recommend PC Live because you don’t pay unless they find a solution. I figured that it would be worth the money to fix the problem. And if they couldn’t fix it, then I wouldn’t be out the money and could keep my dignity.<\/p>\n

Long story short: They couldn’t fix it. They did, however, remark that HP printers are trouble. Like I didn’t know that.<\/p>\n

On the Fifth day (yesterday), I started the PC using the Windows 7 installation disc so that I could run the Repair utility. I used the SFC from that disc to scan my Windows installation. It checked out.<\/p>\n

Then I figured that HP was the problem.<\/p>\n

Booting from the Windows 7 installation disc again, I logged into my C drive and found every file starting with HP*<\/code> in the Windows<\/code> directory and subdirectories. I renamed each one. Further, I renamed the system32\\spool<\/code> directory. Then I ran SFC with this command:<\/p>\n

SFC \/SCANNOW \/BOOTDIR=C:\\ \/WINDOWSDIR=C:\\WINDOWS<\/code><\/p>\n

Finally, errors were found, errors were fixed. The log file was endless; I didn’t even bother reading it.<\/p>\n

I restarted the computer and, to my surprise, it booted right up. Carefully , I ran the Add A Printer wizard.<\/p>\n

It worked! The network printer was found, added, and it printed a sample page.<\/p>\n

Next I powered-on the HP Color LaserJet that’s connected to the PC using a USB cable. It installed okay, but it doesn’t print in color all the time. Excel prints in monochrome. Paint prints in color. I’ll have to figure that out eventually.<\/p>\n

There’s more detail to what happened, but I don’t want to make this a blogopotomus post. Suffice it to say, I spent more time trying to solve this annoying problem than any other computer problem ever. I don’t consider the issue fully resolved until I can get the color printer to print in color. But for now, I’m pleased. And relieved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

arlier this week one of my computers refused to print. The error was that the Spooler Service had stopped. Not a single printer was recognized. No new printer could be installed. The Spooler Service would stop and stop and stop and nothing could print. Ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4223,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/4223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}