Spoolsv.exe Causing High CPU Usage - Jammed Prints - 22/12/2010
A customer called to let me know her PC was running slow. Considering it normally is a fine runner this seemed odd. I remoted into the machine expecting to find all kids of viruses or some other malware. The first thing I habitually do is look at task manager, particularly the CPU useage and the CPU time.
I was quite surprised to see spoolsv.exe working hard and where as normally "system idle process" accounts for nearly all the CPU time. spoolsv had used nearly all the time. Something was amiss with Spoolsv.exe.
I'm no genious but I know spoolsv is the part of windows that looks after prints. In the printer list one of the printers had one single file queued, which I tried to delete, to no avail. So abrief look on the internet revealed the solution.
1. Right click my computer
2. Select Manage
3. In the Computer Management window expand Services and Applications
4. Expand Services
5. Find Print Spooler
6. Right click Print Spooler and select Stop
7. With the print spooler stopped, using my computer navigate to C:\windows\system32\spool\printers
8. Find the files in there, something like '00005.SHD' and '00050.SPL', yours may be different
9. Delete these files
10. Reboot the PC
This should clear the jammed printer and allow spoolsv to return to normal service, just occasionally using a little CPU time.
Cheers.
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