Splwow64.exe error

Question

Hi.
Our users are getting all of a sudden the follwing error when they try to print on our Xerox printers:
splwow64.exe - System Error
The program can't start because x2utili6.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
The users are local admins on their workstation, the printers are mounted automatically by GPO, these are Windows 7 x64 machines, it is affecting not all users (i can print myself without any issue).
I have tried restarting the spooler service and delete the C:\WINDOWS\SPOOLER\PRINTERS files without any luck.
The dll file is located in two places:
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\x2univx.inf_amd64_neutral_0d51743efa7abccc
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3

Answer 1

Hi there!
I've been getting the same error as well, I'm going to try and give a good run-down of what I've been seeing and what I've done. Note that so far, only 2 confirmed cases out of several hundred (with a few unconfirmed users that we happened to come across
printers printing gibberish pages, hundreds of them (another symptom))
First, we have a print cluster, and the users (DL and DG) are trying to print to ColorQube 9201's and WorkCentre 7435's respectively. Interestingly enough, each user can print to the printer the other user cannot. Both are Xerox printers. And both users
are running Windows 7 32 bit.
Let's start with user DL:
We add CQ9201 and do NOT set it as default printer. Open Notepad, type up something, try to print - the error doesn't come up (note that it says NOTEPAD.exe or POWERPOINT.exe, when running powerpoint, and not splwow64.exe in the title bar) We can then choose
a printer just fine and it prints just fine. If we choose the CQ9201, it does NOT give the errors but will print hundreds and hundreds of "gibberish" pages (ascii code basically) NOW, if we have CQ9201 selected as default printer and try to print, it gives
the error about 3 times (each time you click ok) the print dialog comes up, and hundreds of gibberish pages.
For user DG it is the same thing except you can replace CQ9201 with WC7435. Keeping in mind that DG can print fine to a CQ9201 and DL can print fine to a WC7435.
Troubleshooting Done:
removed/readded printers via name and IP - no change
installed print drivers from xerox manually - no change
tried printing from under a different profile on affected machine - no change (DL was moved to a new machine, problem doesn't exist)
moved x2utilE6.dll from a tested working machine to DL's old machine, replacing the DLL in question, rebooted - no change (I also tried to manually register the DLL via regsvr32 but got the "was loaded but entry-point DllRegisterServer was not found" error
Currently user DG is the 2nd case I've seen DIRECTLY RELATED TO A USER (like said, there have been tickets for printers doing the gibberish printing, and I've wandered by and found and stopped some printers doing that), and I don't have hands on on his machine
(HP8560p) I have hands on on DL's machine which is an IBM T500.
I know I'm missing things and this is likely a complete mess, but we're trying to figure out what is going on and figure it might help to have some more input on the issue as when I was troubleshooting it before, there were zero entries on this in google.
Yours is the first.
Right now, I've just run sfc /scannow on DL's computer and it came back 100% complete - did not find any integrity violations.
OH! and Malware Bytes reports nothing, as does our Corporate AV solution (Mcafee)