Word, Excel, Outlook, Print Spooler are slow or fail to start - Cleaning up Windows print drivers

The Problem…

Over time your Windows PC will no doubt accumulate a large amount of redundant printer drivers, especially if you work in an organisation with many different makes and models of printers on your network.

Having many print drivers loaded on your PC should, in theory, be fine but in practice this often results in conflicts, driver corruption and a general slow down of your PC.

If you find your Microsoft Office applications are slow to start (or even fail to start) try temporarily stopping the Print Spooler service (via services.msc) and see if this speeds things up. Another indication of printer problems is if Printers and Faxes control panel is also very slow to start.

Microsoft Office applications search for connected printers when they launch and so they can fail to start correctly if there is a problem with the printer drivers.

The solution...

UPDATE:  Since writing this post (in 2009!), Microsoft now have a 'FixIt' to address this issue.  Click here to download FixIt 50979

There are a number of solutions to this problem but you basically have two options: either to perform a series of small changes to your system until you pinpoint the route cause or simply do a complete clean out of all printer settings and start again from scratch. The latter is often the quickest solution.

Small changes:

1. Open the Printers and Faxes window from the Start menu. Click the File menu, Server Properties and then the Drivers tab. From here, remove all redundant printer drivers listed. Launch services.msc and restart the Print Spooler.
   
2. Open My Computer. Click Tools menu and Folder Options. Untick the Automatically search for network folders and printers option.
   
3. Close all Office applications and run regedit.exe to launch the Windows Registry editor. Locate the following branch:
   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\
   
   You should see subfolders based on the version numbers for the Office products you have installed each with their own subfolder called Word (e.g. \10.0\Word\ and \11.0\Word\). Under each Word folder you should find a folder called Data. Rename these folders to Data_Old.

Cleanout all Printer Settings

Download the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en

Once downloaded and installed, run CleanSpl from the Resource Kit folder in Program Files and follow the simple instructions. Once done you’ll find that all your printer settings have been cleaned out.

Missing TCP/IP network port option!

One problem I found with CleanSpl was that it removed the ability to add a TCP/IP port for network printing. To fix this, open the registry editor again and try adding the following under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitor\

• Add a key called: Standard TCP/IP Port
• Under this new key, add a string named: Driver with value: tcpmon.dll
• Also under Standard TCP/IP Port add the key: Ports
• Under Ports add three Dwords:
• LprAckTimeout with value: 180
• StatusUpdateEnabled with value: 1
• StatusUpdateInterval with value: 10

Now restart the Print Spooler and all should be well.