spoolsv.exe maxes out CPU

[Guest]

I'm helping a business friend with a problem with their
Windows XP Pro machine. After the machine is booted for a few
minutes, and before anything is printed, spoolsv.exe maxes out the CPU
and brings nearly every application to a halt. if I kill spoolsv,
everything frees up for a little while and the spoolsv restarts and
soon the machine is very slow again.

I've run a virus scan and spyware scan (Trend Micro's House Call) -
it found a few minor things but nothing significant.

The machine in question is a fairly new Compaq - I think it is a
1.6Ghz processor with at least 512Mg of ram.

This just started a few days ago - no one has installed anything
knowingly on the machine. The Microsoft patches and updates are
current.

Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

I've seen this happen when someone sends a job to the MS document printer (I
always delete this so not sure of the name). Then every time the spooler
starts the job is restarted in some print loop. Check in
\windows\system32\spool\printers for any spl or shd files. If there is
anything there open the Printers folder and open all the printers. Delete
any pending print jobs.

If you can't do it that way just stop the spooler, delete all the spl and
shd files, then restart the spooler.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.