Print Spooler Service Fails to Start (Access Denied)

Here's the situation: My mother booter her computer, and scan disk fired up to scan her hard drive. According to her, the computer shut down normally the previous day. She reported that it repaired some sectors on the disk. Since then, the print spooler service will not start, so she can't print anything.

I'm trying to figure this out over the phone, so I don't have all the details at hand, but here's what I do know.

1. Trying to start the print spooler service from the services control panel or the command line results in Error Msg #5, Access Denied.
2. The executable is located in the correct place (system32\spoolsv.exe).
3. The RPC service starts up just fine on startup.
4. Her account has full admin privledges

Any ideas why she gets the Access Denied message?

Is there a way to reinstall the service easily without writing a script in C# or something, and would it be a good idea to try that?

 

Hello nebrtoad and welcome to the board,

What I would try is a System Restore back to prior yesterday's shutdown, better yet, a day prior to that, you don't know what happened yesterday and then go from there.

Regards - Charles

 

No luck with system restore

No joy on the system restore. Went back a full week before the disk check to a point before the last known print job was completed. Same problem as before; the print spooler service won't start.

I was slightly mistaken when I reported what the error message was. It's "Access is denied ", not "Access denied ". I have turned up more hits when I google that string, so I'm going to wade into that and see if I can turn up anything.

 

chkdsk is a good utility but once in a while it will destroy things while trying to fix problems. If that has happened, you won't have much luck trying to fix the problem short of running a system file check to repair/replace any damaged system files. You will need a regular XP install CD or if it is a system that only gave you a 'recovery cd', you have to hope for an I386 folder on the hard drive someplace. If you have either of those, click on start => run, key in

Code:

sfc /scannow

and click OK. It will run pretty quickly and silently in most cases.

If SFC fails to correct the problem or if you can't run it, booting from whatever XP CD you/she has and doing a repair install is about your only option.

If you have a regular XP CD and if all goes well with it, you should not lose any data or programs but I like to burn copies of any critical items to a CD anyway.

Note that some of the systems that only give you their own version of the CD will simply re-do the system back to the defaults when it was new and data/programs could be lost.

 

perhaps the problem is just a credentials issue with the service. The access is denied is not the user getting access denied on the service, but the service itself throwing that error on initialization.

Start->PRograms->Administrative Tools->Services
Make hers look like this, and it should start right up. If not, put her account credentials in. If it still wont start, thatll tell us what to do next.

 

Worth a shot

FYI - I tried to use the spool cleaner from the MSFT Windows Resource Kit, but that didn't work. When it failed, it spat out the same error about Access is Denied.

It's a home-built system, and she has windows xp pro CD, so I'll give it a shot sometime soon.

 

It's set up to start the service as the system user, so that's why I'm so confused by why it won't start. I haven't tried to use her account credentials, but I'll give that a shot too.