My co-workers are unsupportable.

[sld72382]

As in an tech support call center many of the people are not really techs, they're there to work. Cases in point...

Case 1: Woman's PC freezes about a minute after loading in normal mode as she has a trojan (that annoying fake "you are infected" warning).

I was the 5th tech, and when I booted the PC in safe mode, it worked fine other than the trojan was still there. Well I take a look at how much memory she had, she only had 128mb AND she had the newest McAfee installed, which needs 256mb. I advise her we need to remove McAfee and she needs to purchase more RAM, none of which was told to her by any previous tech. I did so, rebooted and although it was still slow, it was usable. Because the previous techs ran bullsh*t, I installed and ran the only tool that we didn't run yet that we are allowed to use to get rid of her virus...

Case 2: Client cannot get online in regular mode.

Previous 3 techs ran scanners which came up empty. I saw that he had an expired Norton AND a current but damaged McAfee. I rebooted, ran Norton's removal tool and then removed McAfee, and he was good to go. Also told him to upgrade his RAM as he only had 256mb.

Case 3: Running really slow.

Scanners did not find anything, yet his PC was still running poorly. A quick look in task manager shows "spoolsv.exe" running at close to 65% CPU usage. I booted into safe mode, cleared the "stuck" files from the system32\spool\printers folder, and rebooted. Boom, clean and fast PC. Never mind that I was the 4th tech and this fix was emailed oh, only 5,000 times.

Case 4: Printer issues.

Client states that he is getting pissed that a simple printer install has spanned across 4 people (including me). I look and it's an HP printer, so I uninstalled the driver, cleaned the registry, download a fresh driver and installed it and when the software prompted, had client plug the printer in. Printed a test page and was good to go. Why did it spread to 4 people? All 3 previous "techs" had him plug the printer in first, go through "found new hardware wizard" and try an install it that way. When it didn't work, they ran some bullsh*t system scans and had them call back (translation: they didn't know what to do so they figured it was best to foist it to someone else).

[technical.angel]

Case 3: Running really slow.

Scanners did not find anything, yet his PC was still running poorly. A quick look in task manager shows "spoolsv.exe" running at close to 65% CPU usage. I booted into safe mode, cleared the "stuck" files from the system32\spool\printers folder, and rebooted.

:: steals ::

sld, you rock! Thank you! Now, I just have to remember which computer had that problem...................

[sld72382]

It's usually corrupted SHD and SPL files that get caught in that folder, delete them and you're golden!

[ta2ooed1]

I usually just restart the spooler itself and that will usually clear it without having to reboot.

[sld72382]

I usually just restart the spooler itself and that will usually clear it without having to reboot.

I tried that, doesn't work. When you hit "print" on a doc, it gets converted to an SPL or SHD file by the print spooler which stores it in the above-mentioned folder in my OP until the print spooler can send it to the printer. However, sometimes for whatever reason those files get corrupted and get jammed in that folder and when the print spooler tries to send them to the printer, it can't and it tries and tries till it uses a ton of your CPU.

The reason why restarting the print spooler will not work in this case is because it fails to delete any files from the said folder, including ones that got corrupted. It just, well, restarts the print spooler.