Okay, so something has gone wrong with my work laptop (XP Pro SP2) and I can't see any printer installed when viewing them through control panel. Even more annoying is that I can see them in a print dialog box and print to the "non-existent" printer. Insult to injury I can't add printers (the dialog doesn't open when selected) and now the printer isn't responding when I attempt to print.

Ideas?

2/28/2008 9:07:55 AM

Have you tried restarting the print spooler? Go to Start and then Run and type "services.msc" scroll down to the Print Spooler and double click it. Click Stop then Start. See if that fixes it.

2/28/2008 10:41:14 AM

Okay, here are the symptoms:

Control Panel -> Printers -> Empty, only Add Printer Wizard is shown
Add Printer Wizard never loads
Printers are shown in Adobe, Microsoft Office, and Internet Explorer print dialogs
Notepad Printing causes a popup saying "An error occurred during this operation"

Logged into Event Viewer and its clean, no errors formed from the printers or anything (cleared this morning).

The problem has occurred even with multiple cold restarts.

[Edited on February 28, 2008 at 11:28 AM. Reason : Event Viewer]

2/28/2008 11:22:47 AM