How to restart a hung print service without restarting the server?

Question

System administration

Good afternoon. On a 2008 server (DC) with the print server role, the spooler hangs. In the services, the status is "starting". Through the task manager, PS, cmd does not stop or restart. Writes either "the service is starting or stopping", or "the command is inappropriate for this service." Services on which it depends - work and do not require a restart. Already "waited" since yesterday evening, it did not resolve itself. Can I somehow push it without restarting the server?

Answer 1

If the spooler freezes and does not respond, kill its process (spool.exe). Then start it in any way.
In general, the spooler most often fails due to problematic printer drivers, look for the root of the problem here.
Repeatedly faced similar. Killing a spooler usually doesn't cause any problems - it doesn't work anymore.
It is necessary to calculate the problematic driver, most often it is something from the last installed one. To get started, remove the printer along with the driver and look at the behavior of the spooler, if it starts to work normally, then it's in this driver. You can find a new version of the driver with fixed problems from the manufacturer or look for some suitable driver that is included with Windows.
I came across a situation where a new version of the driver from the manufacturer had some problems, because of which I had to roll back to the previous one. Therefore, I always kept a known working verified version of the driver and the latest one.

Answer 2

The following procedure helps me with a hung service:
we determine the PID of the process related to the hung service using the task manager, launch Process Explorer from the Sysinternals utilities, find the PID we need, go to its properties, then in the "Threads" tab I kill one of the active threads.
Here all actions are at "your own peril and risk" as they say.

Answer 3

cmd as (o)manager
net stop spooler && net start spooler
and what is the result ?