XFOR: Server Stops Responding When Running a Print Service and INS

ID: Q192792

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, versions 5.0, 5.5

SYMPTOMS

When you have printers shared on a computer running Windows NT Server, the server stops responding with a high kernel mode CPU usage by SPOOLSS.

Depending on the printing load and the speed of the server, this problem appears only after the computer has been running without interruptions for quite some time, at least a couple of days.

CAUSE

When jobs are queued to the printer, a message is added to the queue of the window opened by the Exchins.exe process. However, the Internet News Service does not process these messages, and the queue grows until it is too large to be handled in a reasonable time. Therefore, the server appears to stops responding.

RESOLUTION

Exchange Server 5.5

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Exchange Server version 5.5. For more information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q191014 GEN: How to Obtain the Latest Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

Component: NNTP


   File Name     Version
   ------------------------
   Exchins.exe   5.5.2383.0

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server versions 5.0 and 5.5. This problem was first corrected in Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 2.

Additional query words: spooler


Keywords          : exc55sp2fix 
Version           : winnt:5.0,5.5
Platform          : winnt 
Issue type        : kbbug

Last Reviewed: April 27, 1999