In a recent odd problem on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit machine Word, Excel started to hand/crash when trying to format bold, alter page layout etc. Eventually realised this was not within Word or Excel but seemed to be crashing of the Print Spooler Service [e.g. open another app e.g. Firefox and choose to print but it then says cannot find any printers ].
Repeated crashing of Print Spooler Service seems to have multiple causes and hence multiple solutions but one of the more consistent is that relates to a bad printer driver and indeed the HP Universal Driver had been installed recently which seems to have a chequered reputation. . The genera advice is to uninstall the Driver and to ensure complete uninstall manually by stopping spooler service, going to Print Server settings under File in Print Folder and uninstalling the driver. This is not shown in Windows' 7 Home Premium which seems not to have Print management installed and the alternative of typing Print Management in Search also does not work.
However … if you type printui /s /t2 in a run command box the magically you get a window that lists all the installed print drivers and allows you select the relevant one and uninstall it. Even if you choose to uninstall package certain services seem left behind e.g. Net Driver HPZ12 but at least these are set to manual.
