Printer spooler crash on Windows 10 22H2 when printing PDFs

When this happens

You're printing a PDF from Adobe Acrobat Reader or Edge on Windows 10 22H2. The print job goes to spooler. A minute later you get a spooler crash with error 0x00000709. Sometimes the spooler service just stops and won't restart until you reboot. The printer shows offline in Devices and Printers. The queue fills up with stuck jobs.

Root cause

The culprit here is almost always a corrupt or outdated printer driver, especially HP Universal Print Driver from 2021 (version 5.9.0.14135). That driver has a known buffer overflow when handling complex PDF page descriptions. Old Canon drivers from 2019 also cause this. The spooler service can't handle the malformed data — it throws 0x00000709 and dies.

Don't bother with Windows Update drivers. They're often stale. And don't run the spooler troubleshooter — it rarely helps. The real fix is a full driver removal and reinstall with a current version.

Fix it in 4 steps

1. Stop the spooler and clear the queue. Open an admin command prompt. Run net stop spooler. Then delete everything in C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS. Don't skip this — left behind junk files keep the driver in memory.
2. Remove the driver completely. Open printmanagement.msc (yes, it's built into Windows Pro, but on Home you'll need OptionalFeatures to enable Print Management Console). Navigate to Print Drivers, right-click the offending driver (look for HP, Canon, or Brother entries), and delete it. Also uninstall the printer from Printers node.
3. Download the right driver. Go to the printer manufacturer's site directly. For HP, grab the HP Smart app or the HP Print Driver version 6.1+ from their support page. For Canon, use their MF Printer Driver v10.7 or newer. Do NOT get it from Windows Update.
4. Reinstall and test. Run the installer as admin. Reboot after installation. Then print a test page from Notepad first — not a PDF. If that works, try a simple PDF. Still fine? You're good.

If it still fails

Check three things. First: is the spooler set to Automatic startup? Run services.msc, find Print Spooler, double-click, verify Startup type is Automatic, and the service is running. Second: look for third-party spooler filters. Some antivirus or security suites (like Trend Micro or Kaspersky) inject DLLs into spooler. Temporarily disable them for a test. Third: check Event Viewer under Windows Logs > System for spooler warnings pointing to a specific filter — that tells you exactly which component crashed.

If you're still stuck after all that, the printer's firmware might need an update. Yeah, printers have firmware. Go to the manufacturer's support page, look for firmware updates, and apply them. I've seen this fix on three separate HP LaserJet Pro M404s last month.

One last thing — if you're on a domain network, check Group Policy. Sometimes admins push old drivers through GPO. Use rsop.msc to see applied policies under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Printers. If you see a forced driver, talk to your network admin.

That's it. Fix takes 15 minutes. Do it right once and the error won't come back.