Print Spooler Keeps Stopping in Windows 11? How to Fix It Permanently

When Windows tells you the Print Spooler service is not running, or the spooler stops on its own every few minutes, there are only two realistic causes: a corrupt job sitting in the spool folder, or a printer driver that crashes the service while rendering. Clearing the spool folder fixes the immediate symptom; identifying the driver stops it coming back.

Quick fixes first

1. Press Win+R, type services.msc, press Enter.
2. Right-click Print Spooler and choose Stop.
3. Open C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete everything inside it.
4. Back in Services, right-click Print Spooler, choose Start, then Properties and set Startup type to Automatic.
5. Send one short test page. If the spooler survives, the corrupt job was the cause.

Why this happens

The Print Spooler is a Windows service that takes a job from an application, hands it to the printer driver for rendering, writes the result to disk as a spool file, then feeds it to the printer. It runs every printer driver on the machine inside its own process, which is the design flaw at the heart of nearly every spooler problem: a badly written driver does not just fail its own job, it takes the entire printing subsystem down with it.

Corrupt spool files cause the other half of cases. If a job is interrupted mid-write - the PC sleeps, the application crashes, the printer is unplugged - the resulting .SPL file can be malformed. The spooler tries to process it on every start, crashes, restarts, tries again, and printing is dead until the file is removed.

A third, smaller category: the service has been set to Disabled, either by malware, by a system cleanup tool, or by a group policy on a work laptop.

Fix 1: Clear the spool folder properly

Order matters here. If you try to delete the files while the service is running, they are locked and Windows refuses.

1. Open Services with Win+R and services.msc.
2. Stop Print Spooler. Leave the Services window open.
3. Press Win+R again and paste %windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS.
4. Select all files and delete them. You will be asked for administrator permission - accept it.
5. Start the Print Spooler again.

You will lose any jobs that had not printed, which is the point. Everything already printed is unaffected, and no printer settings are touched.

Fix 2: Set the service to recover itself

By default, Windows restarts the spooler after the first two failures and then gives up. Changing that to always restart turns a total printing outage into a brief hiccup while you work on the real cause.

1. In services.msc, double-click Print Spooler.
2. Go to the Recovery tab.
3. Set First failure, Second failure and Subsequent failures all to Restart the Service.
4. Set "Restart service after" to 1 minute and "Reset fail count after" to 1 day.
5. Also check the Dependencies tab - the spooler depends on Remote Procedure Call, which must be running.

Fix 3: Find and remove the driver that is crashing it

This is the step that makes the fix permanent.

Identify the culprit in Event Viewer

Press Win+R, type eventvwr.msc, and go to Windows Logs › Application. Look for Application Error entries naming spoolsv.exe at the times the spooler died. The event details list a faulting module - typically a .DLL file whose name hints at the vendor. That is your bad driver.

Or narrow it by elimination

If Event Viewer is inconclusive, remove printers one at a time in Settings › Bluetooth & devices › Printers & scanners and see when the crashes stop. Start with any printer you no longer own - old drivers for long-gone devices are a very common cause.

Remove the driver package, not just the printer

Removing the device leaves the driver package installed and still loadable. To remove it fully:

1. Press Win+R and run printui /s /t2 to open Print Server Properties on the Drivers tab.
2. Select the driver, click Remove, and choose Remove driver and driver package.
3. If it says the driver is in use, stop the spooler, do the removal, then start it again.
4. Reboot, then reinstall a current package for your model.

You can also inspect what is installed with printmanagement.msc, which gives a clearer view of drivers, ports and forms than the Settings app does. It is present on Windows 11 Pro; on Home editions use the printui route above.

Fix 4: Rule out a corrupt port or a hung queue

Sometimes the spooler is fine and the queue is the problem. Open Printers & scanners › your printer › Open print queue, then use the Printer menu to make sure Pause Printing and Use Printer Offline are both unticked. Cancel any stuck job. If jobs stick at Deleting, that is the corrupt spool file case - back to Fix 1. Full procedure in clear a stuck print queue.

Also check the port. In Printer properties › Ports, a printer sitting on a WSD port is more likely to hang than one on a Standard TCP/IP port. Switching to a TCP/IP port pointed at a reserved IP address is more robust; see printer shows offline for how to set that up.

Fix 5: Repair Windows components

If the spooler crashes regardless of which printers are installed - including with none installed at all - system files are damaged. Open Terminal or Command Prompt as administrator and run, in order:

1. sfc /scannow and let it finish.
2. DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth.
3. Reboot and re-run sfc /scannow to confirm it comes back clean.

Also run the built-in troubleshooter at Settings › System › Troubleshoot › Other troubleshooters › Printer. It is more capable than it used to be and will reset the spooler and clear the queue on its own.

The 2026 context: driverless printing and the spooler

From July 2026, new Windows 11 installations default to Windows Ready Print, Microsoft's Mopria and IPP-based driverless stack. This matters here because it sidesteps the entire problem class: with no vendor driver rendering inside the spooler process, there is nothing to crash it. Printing is handled by a class driver Microsoft maintains.

The trade-off is features. Driverless printing can strip vendor-specific duplex options, tray selection, secure print release, colour calibration and scan-to-PC. If your spooler has been unstable for months and you do not need those features, staying on the driverless stack is a legitimate and durable answer. If you need duplex or scanning, install the vendor package and accept that you own its stability.

Brand-specific notes

HP Print and Scan Doctor resets the spooler, repairs ports and clears the queue automatically, though it will only act on HP queues - there is no macOS version. Brand hubs for HP and Brother list the current driver packages to reinstall once the old ones are gone.

If nothing worked

A spooler that crashes with no printers installed, survives an SFC and DISM repair, and still fails after a clean driver removal points to deeper OS corruption or a malware infection. At that point an in-place repair install of Windows 11 - which keeps files and applications - is faster and more reliable than continuing to chase individual components. Run a full offline malware scan first.

There is no hardware repair economics question here; nothing in this problem is caused by the printer. The cost is your time, and the honest threshold is about an hour: if you have cleared the spool folder, removed old drivers and run SFC without success, a repair install will resolve it faster than more troubleshooting will.

If you would rather have someone identify the faulting driver from Event Viewer and clean it out for you, you can get help from a printer specialist over a screen share.