Print job deleted from queue before printed

I have an HP Photosmart 8750 that had been printing beautifully on my old
Win98 desktop PC using HP's Image Zone software. I purchased a new laptop in
March pre-installed with Vista Home Basic and eventually was able to get a
driver from HP so that I could print from the laptop.

The photos were never quite as good and for some reason I couldn't print
from the top tray. I figured the quality issue was just my inexperience with
photo gallery. But the printer was always offline. Every time I tried to
print nothing would happen. I'd check the printer status and the icon would
show it was offline. Finally HP had an update that seemed to take care of
that. Now, however, everything that gets sent to the printer (except a test
page) goes into the queue where the status goes from 'spooling' to 'printing'
to 'deleting', all before the printer has a chance to grab a sheet of paper.

I spent four hours with HP tech support two weeks ago, uninstalling and
reinstalling with and without the 'offline' fix to no avail. My case has
been 'escalated' to someone who basically has said I have few options (this
post is way too long already to get into that!). So here I am back surfing
through the discussion boards looking for someonewith a similar problem or an
answer.

Appreciate whatever help anyone can offer....