Print spooler service affecting Server Manager refresh

Question

I noticed that after disabling Print Spooler on my servers where we don't use printing off these boxes and don't want to have any unnecesary services running on them, after some time on some of the machines Server Manager fails to refresh throwing "Role and feature refresh failed with the following error: The Deployment provider failed to initialize DISM. Error ..." How is Print spooler linked to that and why? I wasn't expecting it to have any such effect.

Answer 1

Hi,
1.Per searching, it seemed to be a common behavior and some users experienced similar situation according to below thread: they resolved the server manager crash by restarting printer spooler service.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/6f728e8f-86ce-44f2-8694-6b36b2c644df/dism-error-during-server-manager-refresh?forum=ws2016

2.Depending on below blog, it explains the relationship of printer service and server manager:the reason why it crashes is due to how Windows Server 2012 R2 tries to utilize "Color Management" to display icons. And, since the color profiles directory is located underneath the main printer spooler file directory, the Print Spooler Service being shutdown causes an access issue.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/windows-server-2012-r2-server-manager-crashes-when-clicking-on/ba-p/375385

---

Hope this helps and please help to accept as Answer if the response is useful.

Thanks,
Jenny

Answer 2

I was aware of others reporting similar issue but couldn't see the cause only resolution in form of enabling the spooler service back again so this is really good, especially the link to KB. Much appreciated.