Lets say you’re working one day and thinking to yourself: “Hey you know what would be awesome? If I could print this large PDF file on my brand new HP 1020 Laser printer – because that’s what I bought it for – that’s what would be awesome!” Unfortunately though, when you click print all you see is an error saying that the “Spooler subsystem app has encountered a problem and needs to close.” Your only option is to click OK so you think nothing of it and continue to work without the printed material. Later you find that all your printers are gone and you can’t print anything anymore. Here’s what happened: The poorly coded HP printer driver has managed to crash the entire Windows print spooler subsystem because it couldn’t handle that large PDF file you tried to print earlier. When you rebooted, the subsystem recovered but because the print job was still in the print queue, it crashed again. The thing is you can’t cancel the job without the print subsystem running but the subsystem keeps crashing because of the job. This is what we computer geeks call an infinite loop. Here’s how to break the loop and get printing again.
[step 1] Open your computers services control panel by navigating to Start->Run, type services.msc and click OK. If your computers start menu doesn’t have Run on it, try entering “services” into the Search programs and files field on the start menu (VISTA). The services control panel contains all of the systems background services, one of which is the Print Spooler service. Highlight it, we’ll need to work with this service.
[step 2] Open your computers printers control panel folder by navigating to Start->Printers and Devices or search for it using the method described above. This folder normally contains all of your installed printers, but if your print spooler subsystem has crashed, all you’ll see is the Add Printer icon.
[step 3] Place the two windows (the services and printers control panels) next to each other on the desktop so you can easily work with both at the same time. Now in the Services window, right click the Print Spooler service and click Start. Click on the Printers control panel window to bring it into focus and press the F5 key to refresh its contents. You should now see all of your printers. If not give it a second and try pressing F5 again to refresh. The idea here is to start the printer subsystem and try to cancel the print job in the queue before it gets resubmitted and crashes the print spooler subsystem again. If you still cannot see your printers, chances are the print spooler has crashed and is in a stopped state again. You’ll need to repeat this step from the beginning.
[step 4] Once your printers are visible in the printers control panel, locate the HP Laserjet 1020 printer and double click it. This will open the printers print queue where you should see that PDF job. As fast as humanly possible click Print->Cancel all jobs… If you’re lucky this will work on the first try, if not, you may need to repeat step 2 and 3 a few times until you’ve got the timing right. The idea is to quickly start the print spooler and before it crashes cancel the job in the queue.
[step 5] Once your HP Laserjet 1020 print queue is empty, you’re in the clear. Try downloading and installing a PCL based printer from the 1020 from the HP website or get a used HP Laserjet 2200 on eBay. They’re the same price and work much more reliably.
That’s it.
If you power off the printer, you do not have to be quick when trying to delete the print jobs. Once they are deleted, you can turn on the printer and print should resume fine. I am still looking for a more permanent fix, should you have one.
OMG, thanks soo much, i’ve looked at a million forms and they all sounded too complicated
Great stuff.
I had the printer spooler keep crashing on Windows 7 64bit.
Quick search to see why and I saw this post. Noticed that the same printer was also attached. So that saved me a lot of work.
Time to just throw out the printer I think. Buy anything but HP.
David,
You are the best! I just bought a very expensive new system, and I was about ready to throw it out the window. This fix worked like a charm. Am now off to find some new non-HP printer.
Keith
David thanks! My second HP 1018 that had this problem. Clear from the number of Google Hits that there is a problem with the 1018. First time HP “fixed” the problem by sending me a new machine but by now the warrantee was over. So I used Davids advice and it worked. I’m going to be careful not to try to print any super large PDF or any file with this defective printer. Again Thanks to David.
Does not work for me. The printer does not respond to test pages, text docs, pdf’s, etc.
The queue will show a test page being sent to the printer, status “Spooling” then it disappears. Nothing prints.
This has happened before and I was able to locate an executable file that fixed the issue, I thought I saved it but I guess I didn’t.
Any ideas??
Hi, we’re having the same problem, and one possible way to fix this is to switch off the printer spooler service (if it hasn’t already crashed). Then manually empty the printing queue by deleting the files in C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS -directory. Be careful not to delete any critical operating system files.
This will hopefully allow you to start the spooler service without crashing.
Thank you so much! This was my exact problem although with a different HP printer model and your solution worked. I’m very glad to have my printer up and running again.
I’ve had the exact problem [trying to print a very large pdf] and the exact same printer–twice. Your description of the problem and how to fix it is terrific–thanks very much!!!!!!!
But I did have an easier time deleting the file out of the print que [without the "timing" problem you describe]–I still don’t know how I did it, but both times I managed to somehow stumble on the print que, and of course, when I saw the pdf stuck there [document status is given as "printing", which it obviously isn't], I immediately hit delete, and it took.
With the successful deletion of the large pdf, the printer interface–like magic–was immediately and fully restored.
Here is a dumb question–why doesn’t Microsoft and/or HP just fix this??????
Thanks again!!!!!!
Thanks, it was perfect
@Oliver
Your solution worked for me! Thanks!
Try to use other program to read and print pdf documents except adobe and you`ll be able to print large pdf documents on this printer.
Solution is here: http://helpdesk4you.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/hp-1020-series-printer-problem-with-printing-pdf-files/#comment-11