shockwave flash object and .shd file hangs up in print spool

So this discussion over in Google Groups is spot-on:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/microsoft.public.windowsxp.print_fax/i7plfrbOSIE

shd is the spooler scheduling file. It contains data about the job title, the print driver, and the printer. It's partly text based and you can open this file in notepad. the slp file is the actually print data. It's been this way for over 15 years. I think that's older than Shock Wave. Most likely there is a job scheduled to the MS Document Writer (whatever MS Office installs for a printer) and a job was printed to this printer that does not exist and was stuck in a loop until you deleted the job, the spooler no longer did was it is coded to do with the data, send to GDI for rendering to the print device. Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

Just to add to Alan's cogent information, do not make the mistake of thinking files *must* be a particular format just because Windows "thinks" they are and assigns a particular icon to them. Windows uses the three-letter file name extension to determine what "kind" of a file it is dealing with.  Not infrequently, the designers of different application programs end up choosing the same three-letter file extension to describe files that have nothing whatsoever to do with   each other.  The icon that's displayed and the corresponding description that appears in Windows Explorer just represent the last application that has "told" Windows that it "owns" files with that extension. As Alan says, the SPL and SHD files in the \spool\printer directory undoubtedly are print-related files and not flash files.

Long story short, it sounds like something in the printer subsystem is crashing.  This in turn causes those intermediary files to get left around.  Typically you wouldn't ever see them.  There's no actual relationship between those files and Flash Player -- it's just an unfortunate naming collision.

The next thing that Microsoft recommends is to debug the crash in the print spooler process, to see why it's crashing.

These instructions are a little terse, but there's a good guide on using the Windows Debug Diagnostic (DebugDiag), here: Collecting crash dumps – Windows and .NET Programming

Like in the directions below, you'd want to watch spoolsv.exe.  If it's not in the list of active processes to pick in the UI, you can simply type it into the textbox and proceed.

the next solution is to find the problem.  If  there is a DRwatsn.log file (unsure on the name) in \windows you can search for FAULT and see what the failing module is. Or you can debug the spoolsv.exe process.  Make sure the print spooler service is started. Launch task manager, go to Processes, add the PID column, note the PID (Process ID) for spoolsv.exe. Open a command window and type ntsd -p [PID for spoolsv] -g -G you will see a window open with a bunch of module load data.  Now print within the application where the spooler fails.  You will not be informed that the spooler failed but the process will be at a prompt where it failed. Type k to dump the faulting stack and send it back.   You can let the spooler service terminate by entering q [ENTER] at the prompt.  If you mess this up the first time just restart the spooler in the command window  "net start spooler" ModLoad: 77ba0000 77bfa000   E:\3576SRV\system32\msvcrt.dll ModLoad: 77c00000 77c49000   E:\3576SRV\system32\GDI32.dll ModLoad: 77380000 77412000   E:\3576SRV\system32\USER32.dll ModLoad: 77da0000 77df2000   E:\3576SRV\system32\SHLWAPI.dll ModLoad: 7c8d0000 7d0d4000   E:\3576SRV\system32\SHELL32.dll ModLoad: 73070000 73097000   E:\3576SRV\system32\WINSPOOL.DRV ModLoad: 76290000 762ad000   E:\3576SRV\system32\IMM32.DLL ModLoad: 62d80000 62d89000   E:\3576SRV\system32\LPK.DLL ModLoad: 75490000 754f1000   E:\3576SRV\system32\USP10.dll ModLoad: 4b8d0000 4b921000   E:\3576SRV\system32\MSCTF.dll ModLoad: 75e60000 75e87000   E:\3576SRV\system32\apphelp.dll ModLoad: 4dc30000 4dc5e000   E:\3576SRV\system32\msctfime.ime ModLoad: 77670000 777a4000   E:\3576SRV\system32\ole32.dll (324.890): Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (second chance!!!) eax=7ffd5000 ebx=00000001 ecx=00000002 edx=00000003 esi=00000004 edi=00000005 eip=7c822583 esp=00a3ffcc ebp=00a3fff4 iopl=0         nv up ei pl zr na po nc cs=001b  ss=0023  ds=0023  es=0023  fs=0038  gs=0000 efl=00000246 *** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found.  Defaulted to export symbols for E:\3 576SRV\system32\ntdll.dll - ntdll!DbgBreakPoint: 7c822583 cc               int     3 0:001> -- Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

If you can capture a crash dump, I'd be happy to look at it for you.  Everything here says that it's not Flash Player, and that fits with my understanding of how we fit into the larger system.   The crash dump will tell us definitively what's crashing, and will generally make it pretty easy to the appropriate vendor to investigate and fix it.