When I click on Start / Control Panel/ Printers and other Hardware / View installed printers there is nothing there! I then try to add a printer where I get a warning box saying ' operation could not be completed the print spooler service is not running' When I try to start the print spooler I get the following 'Could not start the print spooler service on local computer. Error 2: The system can not find the file specified'

I have restarted the computer - makes no difference.

The printer was working perfectly fine when I turned the computer off last night, but this morning, all the files are missing.

A week ago I had a virus on the computer and symantec advised me to disable the Windows XP System Restore which I did. I forgot to re-enable it.

How did you try to start the print spooler ?

Click on start, run and type services.msc and then go down list to print spooler and right click and go to properties

Make sure it is set to automatic and then click start and then apply

Close services - see if above helped, if you had done this

Any changes that either happened or that you perhaps made to your computer around the time that the problem started; particularly any software or hardware that you installed or setup.

Hi Seahwk,

It's already set to automatic...

The problems seemed to start occurring when I permitted the Adobe Acrobat reader to do an update!
I have AVG protection which is supposed to scan any files I download.

It's already set to automatic...

Is it started or can you start it?

Check your processes in task mgr and end anything with respect to adobe and then check startup items with msconfig to see if anything is starting with PC that involves adobe and uncheck and click apply and restart system - see if any of this applies

Thanks for your help.

Someone suggested the following to me & it worked so I thought I should paste it.

This is the help suggested from another page:

You can try the following steps:
Right click on start --- Left click on explore ---- Go to i386 folder from C
Drive --- search for the file spoolsv --- Copy the file spoolsv and paste in
C:\windows\system32.

If you can find the file and complete these steps it should be able to be restarted.

Thanks for info, useful - Glad you got it working

thanks for your help.

Someone suggested the following to me & it worked so i thought i should paste it.

This is the help suggested from another page:

You can try the following steps:
Right click on start --- left click on explore ---- go to i386 folder from c
drive --- search for the file spoolsv --- copy the file spoolsv and paste in
c:\windows\system32.

If you can find the file and complete these steps it should be able to be restarted.

Thanksssssssssss

Error: could not start the printer spooler service on local computer

Ansr:- go to services.msc and then look for <lexbec server> double click on it and then u will find it disabled in the drop down box,so set that to automatic and then click on apply and then click on start once the service is started,then go back to print spooler and try to start the service and then we shouldn't have that error any more, u should be able to add yr printer and print well

Thanks samstr. That worked for me. I don't know why mine even stopped working though.. Windows is buggy and sucks. Thanks for ruining computers Microsoft :D.

People slowly going to be ------(going)--------> Linux (another free but not brilliant thing)

Olmarik ada trojan infected spoolsv.exe. The anti-virus program deleted it but not before it ruined the Master Boot Record. I believe it may have loaded itself into the cmos system because I could not get any CDs or DVDs to load after complete failure. Only after I removed the battery and reset the cmos system could I get the windows disk to load and proceed with the recovery console. After running fixboot and fixmbr the system was able to be rebooted. I was not sure what caused the failure until I reviewed the eset anti-virus log. At the exact time of its infection and deletion the system failed. At first I thought it was a disk failure or power supply problem. Once the system began working, it would not print. Copying a new spoolsv.exe to the system32 directory returned full functioning of the system.

I have been searching everywhere and have tried many others suggestions to fix this problem, but this suggestion worked!! Thank you so much for posting!

I agree, it is very useful information to know. Files being removed from the system32 folder is the cause of many issues and usually caused by malware.

Good to see you got it running!