Restart The Print Spooler Service

Owned by Tyler Wilson
May 11, 2020
2 min read

The following article will walk you through restarting the Print Spooler service. If you are having issues printing to any printer (both local printers and copiers), a frozen print spooler service may be the cause.

Windows

Your account must be a local administrator to complete the steps below. If it is your district computer and you are not a local administrator, please Contact the Technology Department.

  1. Press Win + R on your Windows keyboard. This will open the Run prompt.

     

  2. Type “services.msc” (without quotes) into the “Open:” field and press enter or click the “Ok” button. This will open the Services window. The Run prompt remembers the last thing typed in to it. If it auto-fills something other than “services.msc, it’s ok to remove it.

     

  3. In the Services window, find the “Print Spooler” service, right click it and select “Restart”. Or, if the services isn’t running already, right click it and select “Start”.

     

Watch the whole procedure below.

If you accidentally start or stop other services while in the Services window, some programs (including Windows itself) may behave unexpectedly or not at all. A quick reboot of your computer will return everything to normal.