Spoolsv.exe taking all the CPU usage

Question

I have Windows XP, and for a while now I've been having trouble with a process called "spoolsv.exe" taking up all my CPU usage--making any program I'm working in lock up. I've found I can just "end process" and it goes away, but sometimes it comes back a while later (like right in the middle of watching a DVD).

I've read some other posts on here about this same problem, but I can't seem to figure out how to fix it on mine. I understand it is a print spooler, but the thing is, I don't have any printer drivers installed (I used to before this happened; can't remember whether I uninstalled them or if they just disappeared). One thing that is particularly bothersome is that the Adobe PDF maker doesn't work anymore, being a printer driver that creates PDF's instead of printing. I even tried reinstalling it but it still doesn't work.

I read on one post that most likely this is some weird printer trying to print something. When I navigate to "Printers and Faxes", it shows none, and when I click on "Server Properties" it says they can't be shown because the print spooler isn't running. At the moment it's gone, since I last ended the process, but even when it's running I still can't do anything because it locks everything up!

So, I'd like to get this fixed; it's been going on for a while and I've just been putting up with it. Please let me know if you have any ideas, and if I need to specify anything else.

-Benjamin

pent7301 · Answer

Message Edited by pent7301 on 08-06-200609:46 PM

Filius Dextrae · Answer

Thanks for the reply. I'm still stumped though; I checked my firewall and spoolsv.exe has full access to the internet, moreover I've never captured a webpage using Acrobat PDFMaker before, so apparently that's not the problem.

I'm not sure though how to check to see if PDFMaker has any print jobs pending; where would I find this? As I said, nothing appears in "Printers & Faxes". I tried making a PDF from a Word file just now, and as long as spoolsv.exe was running, it just locked up, and when I ended that process, it said "PDFMaker cannot locate the Adobe PDF Printer's printer driver. Please re-install Adobe Acrobat 7.0."

I've already tried re-installing Acrobat, and it still didn't work, so now I'm not sure what to do. I don't know that much about this; is there some way I can look at all the print jobs that are pending within spoolsv.exe? Surely there's something in there that's hanging it up.

Thanks for your help.

-Benjamin

Liz2 · Answer

I had this problem and searched on the Internet and found some information that led to one solution that worked for me. Apparently some Nvidia processes might do this. I had an Nvidia driver, and there was an nvidia service running. When I got rid of that process, the CPU usage problem stopped, and there was no difference in the way the computer worked. I also found some solutions relating to there being a Microsoft document imaging queue with something hanging up the spooler. I didn't have that problem, but you might check for that too in case, despite not having a printer, you do have that installed.

Adam Sporka · Answer

Hi,

on my XPS M1210 laptop and I had a similar problem: No matter what I did, spoolsv.exe was taking 10--15% of CPU time. Today I finally noticed that also NVIDIA Driver Helper Service was taking some time. A simple (and kind of RTM) solution was to get the newest NVIDIA drivers available for my machine from the Dell website. They were dated June 2006. I also suggest Process Explorer by Sysinternals.

Cheers, Adam.

Windows General

Spoolsv.exe taking all the CPU usage

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