Windows 7 Print spooler hangs

Question

Running Windows 7 Pro with all the latest upgrades..  Installed an HP 1600 with latest drivers from HP, and local printing works fine.

Set the printer to be shared on the network.

Installed latest HP drivers on 3 other machines, all with latest operating system upgrades..  (1) Windows 7 Pro, (2) Windows 7 Starter, (3) Vista 32.

Print jobs sent from any of the other 3 computers to the shared device go into the print que but hang.

Jobs will not print until I stop and restart the Print Spooler service on the Windows 7 Pro machine that the printer is physically attached to.

However, I connected the printer directly to my network router and all computers can print without problems.

For me this nails it down to being a problem with the Windows 7 Print Spooler or a setting that controls it.

So, is it the Print Spooler, or is it a setting causing the problem??

And, if it is a setting, which one or ones??

Answer 1

Uncheck Enable Bidirectional on the Ports tab of the printer properties on the machine sharing the printer.  The HP language monitor needs access to a resource that only the local administrator has.  When you restart the spooler the jobs are scheduled in system context rather than the users context.

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Alan Morris Windows Printing Team; Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here: http://support.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?adv=1

Answer 2

Hi Bobw111,

For now I would suggest you to restart the print spooler service using the steps below and see if that makes any difference.

Start the Print Spooler service at command prompt1.     Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

2.     Type the following commands at the command prompt:

net stop spooler net start spooler exit Note Press ENTER after each command line.

Let us know if the issue is not fixed and we will proceed with further troubleshooting.

Varun J: MICROSOFT SUPPORT

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Answer 3

Varun, I have been experiencing the same problem with two computers on my network, both with older-medel HP printers attached.  I tried your fix in cmd:

1. when I enter "net stop spooler", the computer responds with "The Print Spooler service is not started"
2. When I enter "net start spooler", the computer responds that "System Error 5 has occurred.  Access is denied".

When I try Allan's solution "Uncheck Enable Bidirectional on the Ports tab of the printer properties", there is no setting like that in my printer configuration for the HP printer LaserJet 1022.

What now?

Rob Shirra

Answer 4

When you installed the printer, the driver default is Enabled.  This solution has worked since Server 2003.  HP fixed the issue with high end Laser devices but some drivers never got updated but new drivers for the new printers have the fix.

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Alan Morris Windows Printing Team; Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here: http://support.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?adv=1

Answer 5

Unchecking "enable bidirectional" solved the problem. 

Odd that this popped up as a problem with Windows 7, after never having the problem with XP for the last 5 years on various printers and networks.  I don't even recall having this problem with shared printers on Win 2K.

I never thought of it because I haven't encounterd it in over 10 years.  The last time I encountered the "bidirectional" issue was years ago with printers running on parallel ports.

Thanks for the help.