Printer Continues to Disappear after installation in Vista

[Guest]

One of my customers has Vista Home Basic installed on his Sony laptop. He has
an HP All-In-One. I downloaded and installed the Vista printer/scanner
software and everything worked fine. He called me back later and everything
was gone (the original problem). He told me that he routinely puts his
computer in sleep mode.

I went back to the man's house, completely uninstalled all the old software.
I hardcoded the IP address on the printer so we don't have to worry about it
changing. I contacted HP tech support via chat and they told me to do exactly
the same thing I was already doing. I reinstalled all software, rebooted,
went into sleep, hibernation and everything worked fine. The customer calls
me the next day and says it has disappeared again.

Anyone familiar with this problem and have an idea of how to fix it.

 

[Tom Ferguson]

When the printer stops showinf on the printer list, is the spooler
service still running?

This is worth a try-

Try this. It removes all Print Spooler service dependencies other than
the Remote Procedure Call service.

Click Start, Run and enter

sc config spooler depend= RPCSS Note the space after "=" but not
before it.

The Print Spooler service should now be able to run. Printer
functionality may be affected. It is best to delete, clean up and then
reinstall the printer drivers.

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

Now go back to services.msc

Right-click Print Spooler, and then click Properties.

Make sure that the startup type is set to Automatic. If it is not, click
Automatic in the Startup type list, and then click Apply.

Under Service status, click Start.

Click OK to close the Print Spooler Properties dialog box.

Let us know.

Tom
MS MVP
Windows shell/User