Print spooler error kills printer useage

My printer stopped working a couple of months ago. The error message says
it's a print spooler problem. It has also done this twice during the past
year and I reinstalled windows xp both times to fix it. So there must be
something about my computer that after a few months kills the print spooler
function (I guess it could be hardware or maybe NIS 2009?). In any case,
I've been reading comments in this newsgroup that maybe a complete reinstall
of windows may not be needed to fix the problem? I hope.

I did a search for spoolss.dll and found 3 instances on my computer, all in
the "C:\Windows\" folder as follows:

$NtServicePackUninstall$
version 5.1.2600.2180
created 4/19/2009

system32
version 5.1.2600.5512
created 8/23/2001

ServicePackfiles\i386
version 5.1.2600.5512
created 8/4/2004


Does any of the above info give any clues about a way to salvage my
computer?
Thanks,
Dick

On Jun 18, 11:35 am, "Miles" wrote:
> My printer stopped working a couple of months ago.  The error message says
> it's a print spooler problem.  It has also done this twice during the past
> year and I reinstalled windows xp both times to fix it.  So there must be
> something about my computer that after a few months kills the print spooler
> function (I guess it could be hardware or maybe NIS 2009?).  In any case,
> I've been reading comments in this newsgroup that maybe a complete reinstall
> of windows may not be needed to fix the problem?  I hope.
>
> I did a search for spoolss.dll and found 3 instances on my computer, all in
> the "C:\Windows\" folder as follows:
>
> $NtServicePackUninstall$
> version 5.1.2600.2180
> created 4/19/2009
>
> system32
> version 5.1.2600.5512
> created 8/23/2001
>
> ServicePackfiles\i386
> version 5.1.2600.5512
> created 8/4/2004
>
> Does any of the above info give any clues about a way to salvage my
> computer?
> Thanks,
> Dick

Those are the "right" three places it should probably be and the 5512
is the Service Pack 3 version. You may have others depending on the
order XP and subsequent updates were installed.

You need to know what SP you are running. If you click Start, and
type in: winver <enter> you will see.

Which error message would that be?

The exact error message (as close as you can), where do you see it,
when do you see it, etc.

Norton (NIS) sometimes has a way of making things not work, so you
might also try to disable it temporarily (turn it off) and see if you
still have your error.

Can you recall if things were working okay before you installed NIS?