The Print Spooler service terminated unexpectedly. 7031

[Peter Stickney]

I have seen this issue popup on older pre-SP4 win2k servers. An Event
Log error is reported "The Print Spooler service terminated
unexpectedly." with an EventID of 7031. Most everything I have read
refers to this error happening on print servers. Well mine is
happening on a client.
I've got a Windows 2000 Server SP4 sharing 5 printers over the network.
About 30 or so other Windows 2000 SP4 boxes have at least 1 of these
printers installed, most of the time more. On this one box, a fairly
new Dell with Windows 2000 SP4 and all up to date via Windows Update, I
keep getting the above error.
Ive come across MS's pages on hotfixes, but they only talk about this
error happening on the print server, which is not my case.
Anyone got any thoughts on this one?
thanks

-peter

 

[Alan Morris]

Delete the printer connections and all the print drivers (must be admin to
delete the drivers). Then make the connection the client machine needs.
Typically drivers that do not manage memory properly will cause the spooler
to fail.

 

[Peter Stickney]

Alan -

This seems to have worked. Followed your steps and used [
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;135406 ] MS KB
for reference. Gave the workstation back to the user about 3 hours ago
and haven't had a complaint yet. I'll reply back if I encounter
anymore issues.

thanks

-peter