spooler hijacking CPU

[JCREY]

System: Win XP SP2, P4 processor, 2 gig RAM



Problem: with fresh boot and no applications loaded other than task
manager . the indicated CPU usage is approximately 50%, constantly.
Disabling hyperthreading will result in indicated CPU usage of 100% without
loading any applications. In either case applications can be loaded but
they are slow to load and perform and this loading/processing time is
proportionate to the indicated % CPU usage.



Abnormal activity is associated with spoolsv.exe (MS print spooler) although
this activity does not adversely affect the print jobs I have tried so-far.



When spoolsv.exe is disabled on start-up, the indicated CPU usage after
boot appears to be normal with little or no activity other than System Idle
Process.



Can I get the print spooler and registry back to normal without a total
reinstallation of Win XP?



John C Reynolds

(change addy best to west)

 

[jcrey]

Hi
I found this answer in another forum. It was the simplest among a field of,
generally, much more radical solutions. Fortunately, it worked.

The problem, below was fixed by removing a single print job which was lodged
on one printer (Microsoft Office Document Image Writer) of a number of
inactive printers. Deleting the document from the print queue solved the
problem. I did not experiment to see if stranded documents in any of the
other printers would generate the same problem.

Select Control Panel from the Start Menu. Click Printers and Faxes. Look
for inactive printers with documents in the print queue; remove/delete the
documents.