bluesman001

Yesterday I went to print something and the oddest thing happened - my PC decided to eliminate my printer driver somehow and turned off the print spooler. The error message I get is: "printer properties cannot be displayed. the print spooler service is not running".

This printer is only a few months old. I printed perfectly fine a few days before, no errors or problems at all. The only changes to my PC, software-wise, was a number of Microsoft updates, and the installation of the newest Win Media Player from Microsoft. I have tried to uninstall, reinstall the driver - but I get to the point where the USB is plugged in and power on - PC should plug and play. It hangs there and I am forced to cancel the install and try manually to add new hardware - I get the same error.

Surfing for clues today lead me to a website saying I should go to:

start - run - net start spooler
or
start - run - services.msc, find print spooler and turn it on.
Also thought I was onto something where the XP Firewall was somehow blocking the driver. Turned off the firewall and attempted to install the driver - same problem.


More info: This is a home pc straight to printer by usb - nothing fancy. Win XP, Epson Stylus CX3810 printer.

I still have no icon for a printer in the printers folder, not can I install one. My many attempts to install one fails every time.

Please help!!

Thanks