The first issue of the evening was that the print spooler had gotten choked on a print job that was sent over and wouldn’t print. I think problem stemmed from the fact that the computer had warned that printer was about out of ink and threw a warning up on the screen. My son didn’t think to move the mouse and look for a message on screen, so they kept clicking print over and over again.

I found this article about force clearing the print spooler, which led to me this article that provided more details about a proposed solution using cleanspl.exe. That didn’t seem to work either. I then proceeded to delete all my printers and printer drivers and try reinstalling from scratch.

That required a 50MB+ download of the drivers from the Lexmark website. That’s annoying because I really didn’t want all the software apps and management tools installed as well. I just want the stupid driver installed so I can print successfully.

After I think 5-6 installation, removals and reinstallation attempts I’m still not back to being able to use the printer. It’s times like these that at least make me entertain the idea of giving a Mac a try. Not so much though, because I’ve had similar issues trying to get a printer installed for use with a client’s Macbook.

Image: Windows XP Add Printer Dialog and Lexmark X5470 Printer from Lexmark website

Post from: EveryJoe

So Much for Plug ‘n Play Printers

I also can’t get my Printers folder to open up and display my printers today. Wondering if the two items are somehow related.

I’m wondering if there was an update loaded at some point that’s mucked with some things. I ran an update earlier this weekend, but I’ve been in Outlook frequently since the update with apparently no problems.

Is anyone else experiencing some weirdness this Monday morning?

Post from: EveryJoe

Outlook Very Unstable This Morning