Printers Disappear in Printers and Faxes

[Peter Jam]

I posted this on the XP SP3 forum two days ago and have had no replies yet:
*******************************************************
I have one user who keeps losing her printers. Networked to a W2K3 Print
Server. HP, Xerox, & Ricoh network printers. I believe even her local label
printer. I tried everything I found searching the WEB.

I have finally detemined if we stop and restart "Print spooler" service the
printers reappear. But that is not acceptable to have to do that four or
five times a day so am getting ready to do a Langa no-format re-install today
unless someone has a better idea.
*********************************************************

Please note the Print Spooler is not stopped, I have seen that many times.
It is started and must be stopped and restarted to get printers back.
Tuesday I did a Langa no- format install of XP pro SP3 and the user returned
today, same issue already.
Our programmer wrote abatch file for her desktop to stop and restart the
Print Spooler services until we figure it out.
It is starting to smell of corrupt user profile though.

Any ideas welcomed

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

She's getting corrupted drivers from somewhere but it's up to you to find
out where!

Personally I'd remove the XP drivers on the 2003 Server and make sure they
were really gone, then add a new set back in to see if that helps.

 

[Peter Jam]

Cari,
Thanks for the reply. We have done that albeit probably not completely.
Confusing though why she is the only user having that issue. Could it be her
local (USB) Seiko 4450 Smart label printer since that is the only printer she
has exclusively?

 

[wraymicrosoft]

I posted this on the XP SP3 forum two days ago and have had no replies yet:
*******************************************************
I have one user who keeps losing her printers. Networked to a W2K3 Print
Server. HP, Xerox, & Ricoh network printers. I believe even her local label
printer. I tried everything I found searching the WEB.

I have finally detemined if we stop and restart "Print spooler" service the
printers reappear. But that is not acceptable to have to do that four or
five times a day so am getting ready to do a Langa no-format re-install today
unless someone has a better idea.
*********************************************************

Please note the Print Spooler is not stopped, I have seen that many times.
It is started and must be stopped and restarted to get printers back.
Tuesday I did a Langa no- format install of XP pro SP3 and the user returned
today, same issue already.
Our programmer wrote abatch file for her desktop to stop and restart the
Print Spooler services until we figure it out.
It is starting to smell of corrupt user profile though.

Any ideas welcomed

 

[wraymicrosoft]

My "Printers and Faxes" this morning is completely blank. I rebooted my
computer and got the same results. Is this related to Microsoft XP update
automatically loaded to my computer? What is the fix?

wraymicrosoft sends

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Just restart your print spooler:
http://www.coribright.com/windows/Article_Nine.htm