Well this is strange, I have seen it before in the past but never really got a fix for it.

Basically I have a PC which works perfectly normally, and we need to replace it. Due to the complexity of the software, we ghosted it using symantec ghost onto another computer. The problem is with this replacement computer. The spooler service keeps stopping, if you restart it the spooler works for about 2 mins then crashes again with event id 7021, which simply says that the service stopped unexpectidly.

So far, I have removed all the printers, registry keys, folders, drivers, files as per MS KB articles, but the service still keeps crashing.

Any ideas.

Did the old PC have a different type of port (eg simple parallel vs Bi Di) to the new one?

If it's all going pear shaped you could try sysprep on the new system and then reboot it.

The replacement pc doesnt have any parallel or serial ports, just loads of USB ports.

presume youve deleted all the ports that get setup in the printer properties too? (if you can keep the spooler running for long enough)

i had a similar problem on a DC that had been upgraded from 2000 to 2003, the spoolsv would hang and take up 100% cpu etc. removing all the assigned ports worked to stabilise it.

I can get into server properties, and it lists lpt1-4 and com1-4 as well as file: , no other ports. Its not possible to delete those ports.