something happened??; now installing printer driver gives error

[mvollmers]

I've got a desktop, XP pro version 2002 SP1 that had my epson cx4800
printer/scanner attached to it. Something happened, and I had a system error
and got a blue screen. When I rebooted, the printer could not be found. I
tried to reinstall, and got the following message: "epson printer driver
setup utility has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for
the inconvenience." I uninstalled the driver, downloaded it, tried again,
same thing. Espon says it is a windows thing. I can hook my laptop up to
the printer, and it works fine. I can actually scan on the desktop fine.
won't even ackoweldge the printer is there. When I loaded up my tax
software, it crapped out at the install of the pdf print driver, so it
appears that there is something that is preventing whatever part of windows
prints from playing. anyone seen anything like this? I had a hardware issue
with a floppy drive, so I was playing around getting that resolved, and in
the process I uninstalled sp2 (also, no room on boot drive), but I think this
happened after that was resolved. Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

is the print spooler service started?

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[mvollmers]

Alan-

Yes, the print spooler service is started. The SSDP and universal plug/play
services were not, but I got those up and running as well. I still get the
same error whenever I try to install the driver, and just trying to add the
printer I cannot see it. If I directly jack the printer into the USB port, I
don't see it as well. I even swept through the registry, searching for and
deleting everything associated with "Epson", but that didn't seem to help
either. I'm wondering if I need to do a reinstall of windows since there is
a glitch somewhere, but I'd prefer not to do that. Any other suggestions?
Thanks.

Mark

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

Can you just run the Add Printer Wizard and install a fake printer using one
of the drivers that are included in XP? Create a Local Port using NUL for
the name.



--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[mvollmers]

Alan- I tried that, and it still didn't work. I put in the windows cd and
ran a repair install, and that seemed to do the trick. started up the
computer and it said "oh, yeah. there's your print server. sure, we can
hook that up". Grrrr. No idea what blew out on it, but it;s working now.
thanks for your help.