Why do I receive “Fatal error on MATLAB startup” when starting MATLAB 7.5 (R2007b) on Windows XP?

When I start MATLAB I receive this error message and also an empty crash dump:

“Fatal error on MATLAB startup”

I have renamed the matlab.ini file in C:\Windows to matlab.old and restarted MATLAB but the issue remains.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

If you have a "spoolsv.exe" process running MATLAB can generate a “Fatal error on MATLAB startup” error at startup.

This process is a printer spooler which has been reported to take significant amount of CPU time.

https://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/spoolsv.exe.html

To workaround the issue, check that there are no pending printing jobs.

Go to “Control panel -> printers and faxes” and check all printers for waiting jobs.

If the issue remains, reinstall the printers (new IP port).