Where have all the printers gone.

All day on 081209 my hp printer worked just fine thankyou with my xp system.
On the morning of 081309 it didn't work nor did it exist on my system. After
considerable effort I got it back late last night. This morning 081409, once
again it is missing in action. No printers installed the system says. The
printer spooler is offline it says. The one commone thread is that the
windows updater loaded something onto my computer in the night that removes
my printer. Any Ideas?

peaking early wrote:
> All day on 081209 my hp printer worked just fine thankyou with my
> xp system. On the morning of 081309 it didn't work nor did it exist
> on my system. After considerable effort I got it back late last
> night. This morning 081409, once again it is missing in action.
> No printers installed the system says. The printer spooler is
> offline it says. The one commone thread is that the windows
> updater loaded something onto my computer in the night that removes
> my printer. Any Ideas?

My idea is that your spooler is crashing and you are jumping to conclusions
on the cause without doing anything towards proving/disproving it.

Assuming (you left no choice) you have Windows XP:

Check your Add or Remove Programs control panel with the "Show Updates"
checkbox checked and see what updates were installed in the last few days
and take note of them by KB###### and then remove all of them and reboot.
Turn off Automatic updates. See if your system again displays those
symptoms over the next couple of days. If it does not, then you may be
right. Install *one* of the updates you uninstalled. Reboot and wait a bit
until you are satisfied it did not damage. Repeat until you have installed
all the updates OR found the update that caused the problem.

Now - if you uninstall all the updates and the problem does not persist -
your problem is mere coincidence and you'll have a better idea where to
start (since you eliminated the obvious culprit.)

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html