Print spooler grinds the CPU

Question

I have Windows 10. A process named "spoolsv.exe", which is the print spooler, takes about 30% of my CPU. Based on other advice from the internet, I tried the following:

• Based on this answer, I removed all files from the "C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Printers" folder.
• Based on this link, I ran the Windows troubleshooter on all the printers; no problems were detected. I also verified that all the print queues are empty.
• I ran a malware check (with "iolo system mechanic").

This did not work. Whenever I stop the service, the CPU relaxes (but I cannot print); when I restart the service, the CPU works hard.

What other options are there?

Answer 1

Sounds like a printer driver issue. As answered in this question, spoolsv.exe loads printer drivers into its process. So if your printer's driver is for an incompatible model or is just buggy/poorly written, it might have issues like hanging threads and/or memory leak, which would lead to high CPU and high RAM usage respectively.

Since you didn't specify the brand and make of your printer, I cannot give specific instructions. But generally those are the steps you want to take:

1. Identify the offending driver and associated printer. This could be easy if you only have one printer installed on your machine. See * for steps if you have multiple.
2. Uninstall its drivers by removing the printer in control panel.
3. Go to the website of your printer's manufacturer, then look for the latest stable driver for the specific model of your printer. Make sure their model numbers are exactly matching - carelessly using drivers for a closely related variant of any device is a common cause for trouble.
4. If the problem persists with the newest correct drivers then you are unfortunately out of luck. Contact printer manufacturer's support and submit a bug report. Maybe they will update their drivers but honestly, don't expect anything.

*: Go to Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Devices and Printers, then remove printers that you suspect are offending one by one, reboot and check if CPU usage has normalised, repeat if not. Note that you will have to reconfigure the printers you remove afterwards. Also you probably want to leave virtual printers (such as Adobe PDF, Fax, Microsoft Print to PDF, Microsoft XPS Document Writer, etc.) alone as they very rarely cause problems.

This kind of problem is unlikely to be caused by anything other than bad driver. Of course you can try things like reinstalling OS, but unless you have been planning to do so for another reason I wouldn't recommend it. I doubt it's going to fix the problem anyways.

Answer 2

I looks like the printer driver is having a hard time translating whatever file you throw at it into the printer's native language.

Try e.g. with a plain text file (no Word or anything, plain text, like C source code or something). Try with a simple PDF file (no images, just text).

Answer 3

I have similar issue: spoolsv.exe and WmiPrvSE.exe taking a lot of CPU.

Do you happen to also have Canon printer? I happen to have this issue with more than one model of theirs.

The only solution I found is to set to manual mode Print Spooler service, and enable it only for when I need it.

Before I tried this I was using Process Lasso to limit this process to only one vCPU or to one full CPU core and also to limit its priority (Process Lasso reapplies all those settings after restart).

Answer 4

my env all canon with multiple server and CPU keeps randomly 100%. only option i ben using is to reboot server. -Set the Spool.exe service to manual, but did not help. could be bad driver, I alooking, but so far no permanent fix has been found.

this is on server 2019 with multiple VMs, 500 canon printers.