Service Control Manager

[Guest]

Hi all, I am getting an error after recent windows updates, the spooler service starts then terminates unexpectedly. If you start it it just fails again. I have a feeling it has something to do with an update corrrupted the service control manager in some way. Does anyone know how to rectify this problem?

 

[Pat [MSFT]]

On the good news side, it is highly unlikely that the SCM (Service Control
Manager) is causing the failure. The way the SCM works is basically to call
a function in the service process (exe/dll) and basically say 'start' or
'stop' or whatever. The SCM doesn't actually _do_ the starting, stopping,
etc. That is entirely up to the service. Think of the SCM as an alarm
clock. When the alarm goes off, it is up to whomever is supposed to be
listening for the alarm to do something. A service may choose to "snooze"
(i.e. not get up when the alarm goes off) in which case you get those error
messages in the Event Log that a "Service Failed To Start..."

The spooler service handles things like loading your printer drivers. It is
possible that a recent change has exposed a problem in a printer driver that
you have installed. I would recommend checking w/the vendor to see if they
have an updated driver available (this just happened to me on my home
machine, so I understand). Some printer vendors (and other hardware
vendors) post their driver updates via Windows Update, so you can try
running that first as it may be easier.

Pat