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

[courtney2000wls]

Your Flash Version	29.0.0.140
Your browser name	Internet Explorer (ActiveX)
Your Operating System (OS)	Windows (Window 10)

I have a recurring issue where my HP 8730 printer stops and can only be restarted by:

*     Opening services and stopping the print spooler

*     Opening the spool file and deleting the files

*     Restarting the print spooler

*     Reprinting

I've noticed that a shockwave flash object and .shd file are hanging up in the print spool each time.  The issue does not appear to be limited to one application.

I have gone to HP for support and on their recommendation, did a root level uninstall and reinstalled my printer which resolved the problem, until this Adobe Flash Player update was installed, and now I am having the same recurring issue since this update.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093110/security-update-for-adobe-flash-player

[jeromiec83223024]

This isn't a widespread problem that I'm aware of.  My suspicion, particularly because this isn't a widespread problem, is that this problem is going to lie at the intersection of the browser and those printer drivers, or it's specific to your system (i.e. something is wrong underneath us).  There's a lot of abstraction between us and the printer, so it's pretty unlikely that this would be our bug.  It's not impossible, but it's pretty low on the list of possibilities.

My guess is that this is going to be specific to IE/Edge.  It would be really interesting to know if you see this in Firefox or Chrome.  It would also be interesting to know if it's a problem when you print to a digital output like PDF, or the Microsoft XPS printer (this would send a stronger signal about the printer driver being the root of the problem).

[courtney2000wls]

The issue is common enough that you can find several hits when you google it:  https://www.google.com/search?q=shockwave+flash+object+and+.shd+file+are+hanging+up+in+the+print+spo...=

I'm using IE 11.

[jeromiec83223024]

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.