spoolsv.exe using up network bandwidth

[TrevorLahey]

We just implemented Meraki Wireless (Z1 model) to all of our outside agents. I've noticed on one user so far that there is a TON of data going across the VPN to our print server (uses about 1mb of his connection). Total 3Gbs this morning. I went to our print server, opened up resource monitor and found that the spoolsv.exe is the process that is using the data. His laptop isn't the only one doing this. There are also internal users that this is happening to. He has nothing to print, and the other users don't have anything printing or in the queue either. You can tell when a user that is working correctly, prints. The data spikes until the print job is finished sending. The users that are having this problem is constantly sending data, both send and receive.

has anyone else ran into this problem? I've looked all over the internet and found some users that have had the problem but nothing to fix it. I can shutdown the spooler service, but once it's started again the data starts to flow. I've done that on both the clients and the server. I've also made sure to check/clear the queue on both the server and the clients.

[sc302 Veteran]

Yes it is going to. print jobs are huge, and they aren't compressed. a 2 meg word file could be a 100meg raw file (which is what gets sent to the printer), it depends on what they are printing. fix this issue by having local printers or by finding a way to transmit the print job compressed over the vpn to the printer network end and uncompress there.

We have done this with terminal servers being accessed over the vpn for years with the use of universal print servers like uniprint, screwdrivers, thinprint, etc. Basically you print on the terminal server, it compresses the print job to your client and it uses your client printer to expand and print the job locally. This worked great for dial up users trying to print locally when using rdp connecting to the server at the office. It saved a ton on bandwidth and kept printing quick vs waiting 30 min to print a job.

[TrevorLahey]

  On 22/02/2013 at 19:44, sc302 said:

Yes it is going to. print jobs are huge, and they aren't compressed. a 2 meg word file could be a 100meg raw file (which is what gets sent to the printer), it depends on what they are printing. fix this issue by having local printers or by finding a way to transmit the print job compressed over the vpn to the printer network end and uncompress there.

We have done this with terminal servers being accessed over the vpn for years with the use of universal print servers like uniprint, screwdrivers, thinprint, etc. Basically you print on the terminal server, it compresses the print job to your client and it uses your client printer to expand and print the job locally. This worked great for dial up users trying to print locally when using rdp connecting to the server at the office. It saved a ton on bandwidth and kept printing quick vs waiting 30 min to print a job.

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's that easy. Since he's an outside user, he has his own printer and he prints to that. It doesn't do him that well since he works out of the office however he has the ability to print to a printer here. He doesn't though, and even if you he did, he's not printing stuff all day. Today he's transfered 7.71GB to our print server on port 49162 if that helps anyone. Almost all day it has transfered at 1.6 mb/s continuously.

One of the users that it happens to here I was on her computer, she was definetly not printing anything. It also transfers a small amount about all day.

[sc302 Veteran]

I just printed out a 2.9MB pdf. Watching the spooler it was a 800+MB raw file being printed. You can easily see that if I were to print that over the internet it would take a lot of bandwidth and it would take forever to print on a slow connection.

Does he print to the printer there, is that were you are seeing this or does he print to his printer next to him and that is where you are seeing it?

If he is printing next to him through a remote desktop connection or someone is send him a job over the internet, oh yes it will take every bit of that and is absolutely no surprise to me. Just think, how many times I would have to print that to reach your total...maybe 8 copies?

The only way around that is to compress it and get it to spool locally.

[sc302 Veteran]

Ok, if you aren't printing, how are you monitoring this on your network? Ignore the above if you are sure the end users aren't printing.

btw

http://www.neuber.co...poolsv.exe.html

"The spoolsv.exe file is located in the folder C:\Windows\System32. In other cases, spoolsv.exe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm!"

Could be something not nice.

[TrevorLahey]

  On 22/02/2013 at 21:53, sc302 said:

I just printed out a 2.9MB pdf. Watching the spooler it was a 800+MB raw file being printed. You can easily see that if I were to print that over the internet it would take a lot of bandwidth and it would take forever to print on a slow connection.

Does he print to the printer there, is that were you are seeing this or does he print to his printer next to him and that is where you are seeing it?

If he is printing next to him through a remote desktop connection or someone is send him a job over the internet, oh yes it will take every bit of that and is absolutely no surprise to me. Just think, how many times I would have to print that to reach your total...maybe 8 copies?

The only way around that is to compress it and get it to spool locally.

I'm telling you it's not that easy. If he prints it's going to be to the printer next to him, not over the VPN back to the main office. We can monitor how much and where the data is going from meraki. 2 days he sent 13.13 gb over the VPN. 11.26gb of that was to the print server, and he's not printing anything. Definetly not any books! The rest of the 1.87gb is email, VOIP phone, and file sharing...

  On 22/02/2013 at 22:12, sc302 said:

Ok, if you aren't printing, how are you monitoring this on your network? Ignore the above if you are sure the end users aren't printing.

btw

http://www.neuber.co...poolsv.exe.html

"The spoolsv.exe file is located in the folder C:\Windows\System32. In other cases, spoolsv.exe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm!"

Could be something not nice.

Meraki gives you a lot of information on what is going on, on your network. I can look at how much file sharing is going on, what computers are sending a lot of data and to who. They've got graphs and everything.. I noticed a lot of data going across the VPN from one user, I look and see most of the data is going to our print server. On our print server (Windows 2008), I went to Performance Monitor and you can drill down to what process is using the network. I did that and found it was spoolsv.exe.

It's defenetly not a virus... (On the server anyway, it's a brand new build).

The only thing I found so far was that it's possibly a corrupt printer install. I'm going to attempt to reinstall the printers sometime this week. Here is where I found some more information.

http://devhen.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/windows-spoolsvexe-using-99-cpu

It's not causing any CPU usage problem...

[TrevorLahey]

Deleting our network printers and adding them back didn't seem to fix anything....

[BrainDedd]

I'd look at the drivers for the printers installed on the machines. It could be some printer monitoring software polling the status of the printer.

[expphoto]

Did you ever figure this issue out? We have a similar issue. One of our offices has about 2 gigs a day/user going over the VPN to our print server.

[TrevorLahey]

Sorry I'm a couple years late, but no, we haven't figured out this problem.  Just deleted the network printer for our outside users.  Decided to look it up today again and came across this old thread.  What type of printers do you have?