Goin’Round X Cursin’Sound: Print Spooler Error 3

Windows could not start the Print Spooler service on Local Computer.

Error 3: The system cannot find the path specified.

 

been getting this message for quite sometimes

tried to fix it

googled hell a lot of methods

but none worked

 

therefore ignored it for quite sometimes

and used another computer to print

2nd round of attempts today

 

did helluva stuffs

on Msconfig, Regedit, CMD

on the verge of erupting already

must be those stupid registry cleaners

 

one of the dependencies of Print Spooler

is RPC service

damn it my RPC kept showing error 3 as well

Error 3: The system cannot find the path specified

 

therefore stuck

should I be fixing RPC or Print Spooler

whatever different keywords I typed

most of the links have already turned purple

 

then something enlightened me

from social technet of Microsoft

Please note, there are 2 similar services :-

Remote Procedure Call service (RPC)

Remote Procedure Call service (RPC) Locator < You DON'T want

this one

 

yes baby

my RPC is running perfectly well

I have nothing to do with RPC locator’s error 3

 

therefore going back to the Print Spooler error

another saviour from social technet of Microsoft

open regedit and navigate to the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\

services\Spooler registry key

and right-click Spooler > New > Expandable String Value >

then name the value ImagePath

then double-click ImagePath and type (or copy and paste)

the following under "Value data":

%SystemRoot%\System32\spoolsv.exe

Image Path…sound familiar

I tried this method twice hours ago

it doesn’t work at all

 

the first attempt

the forum user didn’t specify the location clearly

therefore I dumbly dumped the new key at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\

well it was my own fault

common sense should have told me

there are tonnes of others services under the tab

randomly dumping a millions keys there

would do no effect, at all

 

the second attempt

I was almost there

here is the key

Image Path vs ImagePath

the space in between makes all the different

 

Then press "OK"

Close regedit and see if you can start the Print Spooler service.

 

finally my printer is running like normal again

I didn’t even have to restart the computer

hooray

 

take home points

well it’s not that I wanna act tech savvy or what

just wanna share the information out

hoping that those who encountered the same problem

need not go through the trials and errors

wasting time on it all

 

and more importantly

to see your computer running well again

after some D-I-Y tricks

is something truly satisfying

 

thirdly

registry cleaner

still in a dilemma

to perform or not to

always getting error

the previous one was

Wlan Autoconfig was disabled 

after I performed reg optimizer

but undeniably

after every reg optimizer session,

computer is running like new again

 

maybe it is high time

to source for a high performance yet reliable

registry optimizer cum cleaner

 

last but not least

I got both clues from Microsoft forum

touch wood

next time if I bump into any errors

perhaps it’s wiser to start looking for solution

from reliable forums

rather than bumping around among

hundreds and thousands of sources

and beware

some are just tricks to purchase

anti-virus software

eg:

to perform a free check,

to download the fix

 

oh really?

ahuh… before you know it

maybe you will get your computer infected

with more serious malware or something

 

therefore keep an eye

on these tricks

which you are D-I-Y-ing

happy trying and good luck