Spooler crashes when network PCs are turned on?

Question

Seal

Working group. Almost everywhere windows XP SP3 Home\Pro 6 PC. 1 network printer, two label printers on PC2, 1 hp_lj on PC3, multiple printers on other PCs.
- Turn on PC1 and PC2 - everything works.
- Turn on PC3 and PC4 (I haven’t had time to try it separately yet) - the print subsystem on PC1 and PC2 starts to fall every five to ten minutes, you need to do net stop spooler; net start spooler, then it's possible to print a couple more documents.
Where can there be a poltergeist and how to calculate it? On PC1, every advice in the world to restore the spooler service was carried out.

Answer 1

Practice shows that
1. The printing subsystem in Windows (in particular, in XP) is one of the most unstable
2. Very often problems arise due to viruses in the system.
Plus, don't forget to look at the magazines, there are usually suggestive messages.

Answer 2

It seems to me that you need to dig from the side of PC3 and PC4. Of course, it is better to try to run separately to reduce the search circle. And then, on the problematic one, try to change the driver for the printer. Most likely PC3 or PC4 is sending something unresolvable to the printer. It hangs, and when PC1 and PC2 access the printer, they do not receive an appropriate response, and then their services freeze.
There may also be an option associated with problems with the printer's network adapter. Maybe under load it fails over 2 PCs.
All combinations must be tried...

Answer 3

Faced similar with HP 10XX series printers. It was solved by other drivers or by installing a print server.

Answer 4

1) HP has a spooler crash fix for some printer models.
2) Check driver versions, all machines should be the same
3) Try switching to universal pcl drivers.
4) View traffic in the network with a sniffer, if anomalies are found, deal with them.
5) It’s normal to write a question, it’s not at all clear what you have on PC1 and what does the network printer have to do with it and how exactly is it networked, there is a card in the printer, there is a print server, connected to the PC and shared.

Answer 5

The symptoms are similar to infection with the Conficker worm. Try disconnecting all PCs from the network and running KidoKiller, download support.kaspersky.ru/viruses/disinfection/1956#block3