all printers disappeared

[namsilat]

I am running XP Home SP3. I just found out that somehow all my printers have
"disappeared", and I estimate this problem happened within the past 24 hours.
When I click "Start", then "Settings", then "Printers and Faxes", the page is
now blank. There should be at least 5 items there, including physical and
virtual printers. There were two programs that may be responsible for this. I
installed then uninstalled "Office Convert PDF to JPG JPEG TIFF Free 4.9" and
"RentASoft Image Converter 2.3" last night, so I am pretty sure the problem
is related to one of those. Can someone please suggest how I may be able to
restore these printers?

 

[Lem]

I am running XP Home SP3. I just found out that somehow all my printers have
"disappeared", and I estimate this problem happened within the past 24 hours.
When I click "Start", then "Settings", then "Printers and Faxes", the page is
now blank. There should be at least 5 items there, including physical and
virtual printers. There were two programs that may be responsible for this. I
installed then uninstalled "Office Convert PDF to JPG JPEG TIFF Free 4.9" and
"RentASoft Image Converter 2.3" last night, so I am pretty sure the problem
is related to one of those. Can someone please suggest how I may be able to
restore these printers?

Try using System Restore to go back to before you installed these two
applications.


Or, reboot and then make sure that the Print Spool service is running.
Start > Run > services.msc
The service should be running and its startup type should be automatic.

 

[namsilat]

Unfortunately I turned off system restore a few days ago, so no restore
points to return to. However, I checked Printer Spool and it was set as
"manual", so I started and the printers are now back. However, description of
"Printer Spool" showed "·þÎñÃèÊö". I get quite nervous when I see jumbo
characters like those, because it raises the suspicion of malware or trojan.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Your Print Spooler needs restarting.
http://www.coribright.com/windows/Article_Nine.htm

 

[Lem]

Unfortunately I turned off system restore a few days ago, so no restore
points to return to. However, I checked Printer Spool and it was set as
"manual", so I started and the printers are now back. However, description of
"Printer Spool" showed "·þÎñÃèÊö". I get quite nervous when I see jumbo
characters like those, because it raises the suspicion of malware or trojan.

Although I've not seen this particular problem, I suspect that it was
caused by a bad print driver in the doc converter apps you installed.

Assuming that you have a good up-to-date antivirus application running,
you might download, update, and run MalwareBytes Anti-Malware on general
principles, but what probably will fix this up is removing and
reinstalling your desired printers. See
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

Before you clean everything out, try the first 5 steps and see if
there's a printer driver there that shouldn't be.

 

[Jose]

Unfortunately I turned off system restore a few days ago, so no restore
points to return to. However, I checked Printer Spool and it was set as
"manual", so I started and the printers are now back. However, description of
"Printer Spool" showed "·þÎñÃèÊö". I get quite nervous when I see jumbo
characters like those, because it raises the suspicion of malware or trojan.

It sounds like you have several issues.

You turned off System Restore for some reason (why was that?)
"Several days" with no automatic System Checkpoint may indicate a
problem or SR is not running.
Your Print Spooler service was not started and set to Automatic. What
changed it?.
No running Print Spooler service resulted in your printers being
"missing"
You are seeing the wrong characters in the description field of the
Print Spooler service (why is that?).

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

These can be uninstalled later if desired.