The problem is highly specific, occurring only when printing a particular report from a custom application. The technician has already performed standard troubleshooting steps for the operating system's printing subsystem, such as clearing the print spooler and reinstalling the correct manufacturer drivers, which did not resolve the issue. This process of elimination strongly suggests the fault lies with the source of the print job itself. A bug in the custom application is likely generating a malformed or incompatible print job for that specific report, which subsequently causes the Windows print spooler service to crash.

A. Printer manufacturers do not "curate content" in a way that would cause a system service like the print spooler to crash for a specific report.

C. A conflict between PostScript and PCL would likely affect more than one specific report and should have been resolved by reinstalling the correct manufacturer driver.

D. User preferences regarding online document viewing are a workflow choice and are not a technical cause for the print spooler service to fail.

1. Microsoft Corporation. (2023). Print Spooler Architecture. Microsoft Learn. In the "Print Clients" section

it is detailed that applications (print clients) initiate the print process by creating a print job. A flaw in how an application generates this job can lead to failures in downstream components like the spooler. This supports the conclusion that the application is the likely source of the malformed data causing the crash. (Document ID: 2c8a8287-7252-4348-8b8b-8a6b3553c5d2

Section: Print Clients).

2. University of Washington

UW-IT. (n.d.). Troubleshooting printing problems. IT Connect. The guide outlines a standard diagnostic procedure

which includes determining if the problem is specific to one application. It states

"If the printing problem is limited to a particular document or application

the cause of the problem may be the document or application." This principle directly applies to the scenario

pointing to the custom application as the most probable cause. (Section: "Is the problem specific to a particular document or application?").