Broken control panel and no printing in Vista
After installing, and subsequently uninstalling, some software on one of my Vista x64 boxen, Control Panel from the Start menu brought up a menu- & title-less window which hung for 15-30 seconds, then closed itself. Printing also stopped working, and trying to Add a Printer (the way I got some Control Panel functionality was by accessing it thru Windows Explorer) gave me “Windows can’t open Add Printer …”, continuing Redmond’s fine tradition of ironic (and funny, when it doesn’t happen to you) error messages.
First find was that the Print Spooler service (run services.msc for a list of services) couldn’t start (Error 3: The system cannot find the path specified). The culprit turned out to be a missing registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Spooler\ImagePath — it was completely gone! It needs to be of type REG_EXPAND_SZ (Expandable String Value — it will not work as REG_SZ!), and typically contains the value %SystemRoot%\System32\spoolsv.exe. Now I got the print dialog box, so I let out a deep sigh of relief and hit Print. Whoopsie daisy, spoke too soon!
Turns out the Software Licensing service was missing the same key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\slsvc\ImagePath); fixed it the same way with a REG_EXPAND_SZ containing %SystemRoot%\system32\SLsvc.exe. Finally, all is well again!
December 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Wow, this is awesome. I had the same issue and this is the only fix I have been able to find that is of any use.
Now… I just wonder what broke it… Thank you for this info!
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I just troubleshot my friend’s problems with Vista – this article resolved the problems.
Thank you so much for posting this article!
Spencer
January 8th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I’m the guy who’s computer SpenserAR just fixed. I just had to fix it again, this by myself, but the instructions are excellent. I had no trouble. I had used the Eusing registry cleaner (www.eusing.com), that I like very much to clean things…turns out it likely removes the above keys. I unclicked “windows services” checkbox…all is well. Thanks for the article!
February 9th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Wow thank you.
I disabled Software Licensing because as far as i could tell it was useless. Control panel then starting having the problem you described and I enabled the service again.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Wow,
This is the only solution that actually works! thanks a lot! i had this problem for months until i found this.
Probarly the Eusing Free Registry Cleaner deleted them.