You start the Print Spooler, printing works for a minute, and then it stops again — all printers gone, the same error back. The restart was never the fix. This guide finds what is actually crashing the service and removes it.
It happens in offices and shops every day: you print a document, nothing comes out, you open the printer settings and every printer has vanished. The Print Spooler service has stopped. You start it again, it works — and then it stops again. This guide follows the same order as the video: understand why it keeps stopping, clear the stuck job, read the name of the real culprit in Event Viewer, and fix that — not the symptom.
You start it, it shows Running — and a minute later it is Stopped again. That pattern means something is crashing it, not that the service is broken.
Every print job first lands in the spooler. The Print Spooler service (spoolsv.exe) holds the job in memory and on disk, feeds it to the printer driver, and the driver talks to the printer. If the service stops, Windows hides all printers and nothing prints — which is why Control Panel suddenly shows an empty printer list.
Here is the part most quick fixes skip: the spooler rarely stops on its own. Almost every time, one bad print job or one faulty printer driver crashes it. Restarting the service just loads the same bad job or the same bad driver again, so it crashes again. That is the loop this guide breaks.
A single restart is a diagnostic step, not the fix. Open services.msc, find Print Spooler, and click Start. Then send a small test print.
If it prints and stays up for the rest of the day, the crash was a one-off corrupt job. If the service stops again within minutes — or stops the moment a particular document is printed — you have confirmed the loop, and one of the steps below is your real fix.
services.msc and press EnterA corrupt job sitting in the spool folder can crash the spooler every single time it starts, because the service tries to process that job first. Clearing the folder removes it completely.
net stop spoolerC:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS.SPL and .SHD — safe to delete)net start spooler and print a test pageWhen the spooler crashes, Windows logs exactly which file caused it. Open eventvwr.msc, go to Windows Logs → Application, and find the Application Error event (Event ID 1000) for spoolsv.exe. The field that matters is Faulting module name — very often it is a printer driver DLL, not a Windows file.
That one name turns guesswork into a target: the printer whose driver owns that DLL is the one to repair in the next step. The full method of reading these events has its own detailed guide linked from this series.
If one printer's driver is crashing the spooler, reinstall that printer cleanly — and only that one. Remove the printer, then remove its driver package from Print Management (printmanagement.msc) → All Drivers, restart, and install the latest driver from the printer maker's official website.
On a PC with several printers, remove them one at a time and test after each removal. Removing everything at once destroys the evidence and your afternoon. If the spooler survives with one printer removed and dies when it comes back, you have found the culprit with proof.
Windows can load a printer driver in its own separate process instead of inside the spooler. In Print Management, right-click the suspect driver → Set Driver Isolation → Isolated. Now if that driver crashes, only its own host process dies — the spooler and every other printer keep working.
Isolation is a containment tool, not a cure. Use it to keep the office printing while you arrange a proper driver update or a printer replacement.
In the Print Spooler properties, the Recovery tab can restart the service automatically after a failure. Set First failure and Second failure to Restart the Service with a 1-minute delay.
Be honest about what this is: a bandage. It hides the crash from users and buys you time, but the bad job or bad driver is still there, crashing the spooler on a schedule. Use it while you fix the root cause — never instead of fixing it.
The full print spooler repair — finding the real culprit and stopping the crash loop — is shown step by step in the video.
▶️ Watch Full VideoBecause restarting does not remove the cause. A corrupt print job waiting in the spool folder, or a faulty printer driver, crashes the service again as soon as it loads. Clear the spool folder and repair the driver the Event Viewer names, and the loop stops.
Yes. The files in C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS are temporary print job files (.SPL and .SHD). Stop the spooler first with net stop spooler, delete the contents, then start the service again. Any document that was waiting will need to be printed once more.
No. When the Print Spooler service is stopped, Windows simply cannot list or use any printer, so the list looks empty. Your printers and drivers are still installed — they come back the moment the spooler runs and stays running.