Print Spooler Subsystem App Error

By admin | Mar 4, 2006
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kill-comp-color.gifI bet you feel like that picture – don’t you? If you are encountering this error, you will be tempted to just reformat your computer. It will drive you insane. Let me try to steer you in the right direction. You may not have heard about the .shd or .spl file extensions and you may not care. First things first. Try to start/restart the spooler service. Sometimes this helps. In Xp, go to the control panel, administrative tools, services. Go down to print spooler and start or restart if it’s on already. Then try to print again. No luck? Then it’s time to get our hands dirty and learn a little. Don’t worry this isn’t too painful…

You can go to Undocumented Printing to learn about the file formats .shd and .spl. They basically hold the print job and drawing instructions. What happens is that, for numerous possible reasons, that job is corrupted and locks up the print que. This crashes the spooler subsystem. So, no adding, deleting printers or printing can be done.

First, shut down the print spooler service (see above). Next, delete any orphaned/corrupt .shd and/or .spl files in the c:windows/system32/spooler/printers directory. Or, you can go to this HP site and have this batch file do it for you. This may be particularly helpful if you are having the issue with a Brother printer. Restart the print spooler service. Now, if you keep getting this issue, you may have a problem with the print driver you are using. Try changing it. If you have a print server, then it may be to blame. I hope that helps!

Tip: If you are having other problems with your computer, like slowness or errors, you should check out Registry Fix.

(Picture Source: MIT)

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93 Comments so far
  1. Cliff May 28, 2006 6:18 pm

    Very helpful.

    Thank you very much.

  2. B. Love October 9, 2006 6:44 pm

    You are a lifesaver…I had been trying to correct this problem for over 2 hours and finally did a google search and ur site popped up…tks so much.

  3. Henrik November 13, 2006 3:43 am

    Thank you so much! I had this problem too and it was solved thanks to you!

  4. Cathy November 16, 2006 10:51 am

    Fantastic! After spending half the morning trying everything I could think of I googled print spooler subsystem error and found you. Worked like a charm! Thanks.

  5. Tony November 16, 2006 3:21 pm

    Saved my day! Thanks for the excellent advice and help! It really did work like a charm…thanks again!

  6. russ November 22, 2006 2:11 pm

    worked perfectly…your a life saver.
    thanks very much

  7. mehmet November 28, 2006 4:22 am

    Thank you man, you saved the day! Very helpful and neat indeed.

  8. scoale November 30, 2006 1:34 pm

    This worked for me! Thanks a million.

  9. Christoph Lindemann December 12, 2006 12:08 pm

    Undocumented Printing has moved to:

    http://www.undocprint.org/

  10. Joe December 13, 2006 9:17 pm

    Thanks for the help. I have had to do this before but could not remember where the spool files were kept. Big help. Keep up the good work.
    Joe

  11. Gary Covington III January 13, 2007 1:59 am

    Thanks, VERY MUCH!!! I have been chasing this problem for two days, and finally found this site. Fixed the problem in 10 minutes.

    Thanks again.

    Gary III

  12. Richard February 7, 2007 5:18 pm

    Thanks so much for your help. I’ve been dealing with this problem for two days and, yes, I was ready to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall.

    I wonder why this isn’t posted on the Microsoft kb site??

    THANKS AGAIN!

  13. Debbie May 21, 2007 5:03 am

    Did not work for me, probably why it isn’t posted on the Microsoft KB site!!

  14. Hamish May 25, 2007 6:11 am

    Brilliant: 100% more helpful than MS KB site!

  15. JC May 29, 2007 1:43 pm

    Excellent. SO helpful. Again, 100% more helpful than MS KB Site.

  16. Uriel June 2, 2007 1:11 pm

    I downloaded all the registry so called programs that said they could fix the print spooler. I wasted hours to no avail. Then I found this site…and did the 2 min process…and it worked. You saved the day! Thanks again.

  17. Roanna Martin June 4, 2007 3:38 pm

    Thank you so much for your advice that was posted on the internet on ‘print spooler Subsystem App Error’. My boss was waiting for a reply from our computer guy and I was printing from another computer and decided for myself to try and install the printer and check this problem out for myself. Your solution worked like a charm, and within minites I was printing again.

    Thanks so much again for your help on printer problems.

  18. Raymond June 13, 2007 10:26 am

    BAM! Problem solved. Thanks a TON!

  19. Martin June 16, 2007 8:26 pm

    Fantastic!!!!

    MS’s “solution” was too daunting to attempt.
    I had to get my PC up and running ASAP.

    Your solution fixed the problem in a few minutes.

    I, too, cannot understand why MS can’t post such an elegant solution on their pages???

    Thank you for dropping my blood pressure 40-50 units!

  20. Adam June 17, 2007 3:52 pm

    Yessssssssss thank you so much.

  21. Print Spooler Subsystem App Error : PaulTech : Tenglar, án ábyrgðar June 20, 2007 8:44 pm

    [...] Print Spooler Subsystem App Error : PaulTech [...]

  22. Barb June 21, 2007 12:51 am

    This is amazing! My husband was ready to throw his laptop, printer and me out the window till I found you. Thank you so much!

  23. MBK June 22, 2007 8:09 am

    This was so simple and saved me from a disaster. Many,many thanks. I wish all fixes were so simple, concise and to the point!

  24. Jenn June 22, 2007 10:00 am

    OMG, thank you so much!!!!! Two days of dealing with microsoft suggestions of updating files and all other sorts of crazy info. Stumbled upon this site and all I had to do was delete ONE file!

  25. Howard June 22, 2007 12:59 pm

    Thank goodness for people like you and Google
    I had three issues at once – internet connectivity, a registry problem and a printer malfunction.

    The first two took about 30 minutes – I had not a clue about the printer issue and you’re right – the window looked like the right place for the computer.
    Five minutes after I found this site and I was back up.

    Thank you -

  26. DWG June 28, 2007 6:01 pm

    Simple and effective. Thanks.

  27. admin June 29, 2007 11:34 am

    It’s great to see that this post has helped so many people! Thanks for the comments.

  28. brian halio July 6, 2007 8:48 pm

    My Lexmark printer went down and I can’t even re-install the driver — now I have minus-zero printer and I know I got some kind of bug-shot. I can’t get the print spooler going at all or understand any of this… thanx?!

  29. Goran July 11, 2007 1:36 am

    Bravo majstore!!

  30. Fiona July 13, 2007 7:12 am

    Thank you sooooo much! I cannot believe it was so simple. I just did the first restart of the spooler and I was up and running again after nearly 48 hours of utter frustration and $50 spent on a 100% promised fix. I subscribe to an advice by telephone for computer support and they spent 2 hours on the phone with me to no avail. What a life saver you are! I wish your site was the first one I had found! We are a very small family business producing bespoke personalised products. This was our very busiest season for autograph books for schools and with the end of term so close I was in despair. Thank you once again. You have my undying admiration.

  31. Jonathan July 20, 2007 1:25 pm

    I wish I would of tried this first before I reimaged the computer.

  32. Steve August 5, 2007 2:17 pm

    Brilliant, painless, perfect. You are my hero. This came about from trying to install a firmware update to my HP Coloer LaserJet 2840 All-In-One that I bought from CompUSA before they closed down locally. Without you, there could’ve been a very ugly incident in my office!

    Thank you,

    Steve

  33. Steve August 5, 2007 2:18 pm

    pls change “Coloer” to “Color” in previous comment, thnx!

  34. Billie August 7, 2007 2:30 pm

    This fixed my problem in like 2 minutes! Saved me days of work. Thanks so much!

  35. wm afendi August 16, 2007 10:59 pm

    thanks big bro. You save my time so much!

  36. Le Quang Hai August 27, 2007 8:45 pm

    Thanks gopaultech.com for this advice. It helps me fix my problem. Now my printer works again and my job, too. Thanks you so much. It’s fantastic!!!

  37. Tina September 3, 2007 10:05 pm

    Thank you so very much. Your instructions were so simple. I love you!

  38. Nita September 6, 2007 10:07 am

    Me sooo love you long time for this one. I almost went bald when this happened to me!

  39. Mike September 9, 2007 10:13 am

    Many Thanks – 100% successfull

  40. Lori September 12, 2007 8:29 am

    I’m so grateful there are people like you out there that are able to give simple, clear, directions to solve this problem. I was getting so frustrated and was relieved to find an easy fix! Thank you so much.

  41. Lance Howes September 12, 2007 11:51 pm

    You should send this to microsoft then maybe they could solve their own problems.

  42. Kathy September 17, 2007 1:37 pm

    Thanks, fixed!

  43. dave September 23, 2007 8:05 pm

    Worked! Thanks!

  44. Diana Edwards September 29, 2007 12:06 pm

    message saying the service print spooler is preventing the machine from entering standby. Try stopping this service and try again. I don;t know what to do Help!!!

  45. George Fiala October 1, 2007 3:53 pm

    Ditto to all the above. I just about went crazy all day, and it turned out there was a shockwave file in the spooler area. I deleted it and presto printo!

    A friend told me that could have happened when trying to print a web page…

    Thanks again!

  46. Sonia October 5, 2007 9:28 am

    This was a God’s sent. Thank you. Our computer staff was bz fixing bigger problems, meanwhile I couldn’t print. You saved me one more day of frustration!!! I will be checking this website on future ‘error’ msgs.

  47. Tammy October 15, 2007 9:42 pm

    Thank you! Thank you! I’ve spent 4 hours trying to get this error fixed! Found your post and it did the trick! Blessings to you in the name of the Lord!

  48. Jim Smith October 25, 2007 4:16 am

    I looked at several possible solutions on the net. Was tearing my hair out for a whole day when I came upon your site. Deleting the 2 .shd files worked like magic. I am forever in your debt.

  49. m November 5, 2007 12:40 am

    You saved me and countless hours. No other advice solved this. You did… immediately

    In your debt

  50. JoanMenrod November 14, 2007 6:43 pm

    WOW!!!!
    I spent 3 days. I was upset, my life was becoming miserable! I didn’t know what to do. I was hating MICROSOFT. I was hating their employees and programers because NOTHING SIMPLE appears in their WEBPAGE.
    But you made things SO EASY, SIMPLE, MARVELOUS. I really thank you! Thank you and Thank you!
    What I did was very simple, I looked up for the shadow extentions (in search files) you mentioned “*.shd and *.spl” as soon as I got them I deleted them. Suddenly my printers appeared. It was NORMAL AGAIN! I feel like when I proposed my wife. Hahaha
    Thank PAUL TECH, Thank You again!

  51. tina November 29, 2007 1:43 pm

    thanks!!! worked like a charm!

  52. boknit February 28, 2008 10:49 pm

    thank you very much….tanks a lot…..

  53. John March 6, 2008 12:11 pm

    We’ve had this problem on and off for weeks. Sometimes it seemed to be resolved by changing the toner cartridge; sometimes it turned out to be a trojan. Today, your advice about deleting orphan files solved the problem simply and easily. thank you so much.

  54. Louis March 14, 2008 8:12 am

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
    You a really a life saver! I was going crazy with this problem, I tried microsoft help, I called computer specialists and still no success.
    Keep up the great work!!!

  55. Zungalele May 6, 2008 9:37 am

    I just googled your page. I worked like a charm! Tnx!

  56. azzie May 17, 2008 10:22 am

    I just love to-the-point advice instead of the technical jargon the net is full of! Big thanks, mate!

  57. joe speese May 27, 2008 8:58 am

    Excellent – thank you!

  58. Dominic Williams May 30, 2008 10:27 am

    Words fail me!!! I’ve been messing about for nearly 3 hours trying to fix this problem and then I found your site – you are a life saver. Fan bloody tastic!

  59. jima May 30, 2008 6:57 pm

    I spent 3 hours getting nowhere…thought I was going to have to turn it in to our support guys. When I saw the printers listed again, I almost cried.. Thank you.

  60. Patrick Murphy June 18, 2008 8:20 am

    Thanks one more time.
    Still saving time and money and stress after all this time. What a valuable bit of advice. This worked on XP Pro in 2008!

  61. Brenton June 18, 2008 7:53 pm

    Nice work. I could see the *.shd files, but the other files in the folder didn’t have an extension. Deleted them anyway and it all seems to work fine now!

    Thanks!

  62. hiez June 28, 2008 8:25 am

    i’ve been struggling with this problem for almost a day, i have found a lot of suggetions like yours but, unfortunately that doesn’t solve my problem. i still receive this ****** error “spooler subsystem…” i have done everyting like DELETING that .shd file, used cleanspl.exe and i’ve even reformatted my PC…BUT STILL i have this HEADACHE. pls help me. i really need to print some importatnt documents ASAP,or i w’ll be dead! :(

  63. hiez June 28, 2008 8:35 am

    BTW, my printer is HP and i can print text documents w/o problems, but when i tried printing SOME graphics and SOME pictures i encounterd that problem. I was able to print SOME pictures too, so defnitely, i have no idea what to do and what is goin on????

  64. larry July 24, 2008 5:29 am

    You are a star! It worked like magic after hours of fluffing about

    Thanks a million!

  65. lance July 30, 2008 4:02 pm

    It’s people like you that make people like me look like we know what we’re doing. Thanks.

  66. Jan August 14, 2008 5:31 pm

    Works!!! Many thanks!

  67. Nancy August 18, 2008 11:50 pm

    Thanks so much. When it happened before, had everything reinstalled. Worked for awhile until yesterday after trying to print a pdf file, it hung up. Then searching the web found your solution. It made sense about the corrupted print job locking up the que. So deleted the .spl and .shd file and lo and behold…a miracle! Thanks again.

  68. Muhammad Sohail August 19, 2008 1:54 am

    Thanks. It resolved my issue.

  69. JCCHIN August 28, 2008 1:58 am

    U r the one MAN !!!
    My problem already solevd
    Thank you very much….muack!!!! lol

  70. Leah September 5, 2008 11:32 am

    This worked and was so simple. Thank you SO much!!!!

  71. matthew boladele akanle September 17, 2008 8:26 am

    you are great!! my problem has been solved via your website. keep up with the good work thanks

  72. john September 25, 2008 11:01 pm

    thankz a ton ur a genius

  73. helton October 7, 2008 8:18 pm

    Thanks for this post. very helpful

  74. Mary October 23, 2008 5:28 pm

    Again!! Had this problem a couple of months ago, and after a few days of run arounds, I found this site. A very simple fix, go figure.
    Well it happened again, and I was frantic to find you site again, (I forgot to bookmark it). Thanks goodness I found it. At least I only lost 10 minutes this time. Not days. Thanks again!!!

  75. Steve November 11, 2008 3:48 pm

    Awesome. Thanks for saving me a whole bunch of time!

  76. baltrus November 14, 2008 5:56 am

    It worked, thaks a lot

  77. Stanley December 4, 2008 3:54 pm

    Thanks a Lot dude…….

  78. lucas December 18, 2008 11:12 am

    Tanks,
    could have safed me one hour if i found you’re posting immediately
    still helpfull in decemeber 2008..

  79. Vlado Stojanov, Macedonia December 22, 2008 7:06 pm

    Thank you ,thank you thank you.
    I solve my problem and I am very grateful to you. God blase you.

  80. G Man January 27, 2009 7:19 am

    Thank you very much, This worked, its been driving me crazy working this out! Good Post!!!

  81. Jason February 18, 2009 1:19 pm

    Brilliant!! Thank you very much… You saved me hours of headaches…. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  82. Mark May 5, 2009 11:55 am

    WoW, three years later and that fix is still saving peoples a$$es :-)
    Seems to have worked great on a MS 2003 print server, thanks!!

  83. Eric June 10, 2009 12:37 am

    Baller!!!!! Thanks for the info!

  84. Bill July 21, 2009 7:29 pm

    After hours of searching your simple and easy directions cleared up a repeated problem that I have been dealing with for years!

    You are a gentleman and a scholar.

    Thank you very much,
    Bill

  85. R2K September 26, 2009 8:24 am

    you’re the best man…

    you solve my problem on my Brother DCP150C printer..

    Thank you so much…

    You’re the best!!!

  86. Indra K. Maharjan October 30, 2009 4:21 am

    Thank you very very much.

  87. moose230 October 30, 2009 1:09 pm

    I just used this article to work on a Dell Inspiron 710m and it worked like a charm! I opend Task Manager and found that the spool.svc was taking up a high percentage of CPU time, (91 to 98 %) I did exactly as the article stated to do, rebooted the system, logged in, opened Task Manager again and the spool.svc has stayed at 0.0%, thanks for the help.

  88. Lori November 1, 2009 5:49 pm

    You’re awesome! Thanks!!

  89. Sandy November 12, 2009 12:54 pm

    Thank you very very much, it is a great help. Almost need to install xp again, luckyly found your tips.

  90. shane February 26, 2010 1:15 pm

    need this solved with a vista machine tried mircosofts fix it program but its still not working

  91. Richard April 16, 2010 12:33 pm

    Thanks, that fixed the problem immediately!!

  92. Jennifer May 25, 2010 1:57 pm

    Thank you so much! I was about to give up when I found your page – you saved me (and my printer)!

  93. Jo June 21, 2010 2:32 am

    THANKS So much…May the almighty bless u with more ideas..

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