HELP oh XP guru's

[Guest Will]

Help guys, i got a an XP pro machine. and all the printers installed have disappeared.

andthe add printer wizard does not start..

Any ideas?

I have looked for rogue .dll's and such, but it's stull not playing.

Will

[Guest siu99spj]

Need more info. Install ANYTHING new?

Are they USB/Parallel/Serial/Network printers?

Do they work off the networked machines?

If ethernet printers, can you ping them?

Do you get an error message when you try to reinstall?

Are the printers turned on (Yeah I know, but...)?

and this is not from an XP guru, more like a hardware geek!

[Guest Chris b.a.r.f.]

Have you messed about with XP's services recently? This could have something to do with the spooler service - I did this (stopped spooler services using run -> services.msc) and all my printer functionality went down the pan ;) not necessarily the solution to your prob, but worth looking to see if your Spooler's set to "Stopped" or "Disabled"...

[Guest Will]

Thanks for looking at this guys. I've read the ideas, most of which I have already tried. ;)

No dice on this pc.. looks like a reinstall. :)

(if you do get this, install or uninstall SP1, as that 'used' to be my solution.) :shock:

Anyone who finds anything else out. let me know.

Will

[Guest TSCRYPTO]

Dunno if this is of any use but...

You said that the printers installed have disappeared? i take it then that they were 'there' at one stage.

Would doing a system restore be of any use? That is under START select HELP AND SUPPORT and basically 'roll back' your PC to how it was setup up x days ago.

I installed some s/w here last night which basically screwed my ADSL and 56k access. No amount of resetting/reinstalling the modem or tcp/ip settings would help. Then a mate suggested just rolling back the pc to how it was prior to the problematic s/w being installed.

And now, all is well - equilibrium has been restored.

Just a thought.

;)