Print spooler issue

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Guest

I've had several computers on a small school LAN I manage pop up with an
issue recently where the printer or printers will either disappear from the
printer list or when I try to open the printer que (if they're still there)
or properties page I get a message saying the Print Spooler service is not
running. I check the service in the Services area and it says the service
is, indeed, running. When I reboot the computer everything goes back to
normal. This occurs on both USB connected and LAN printers using TCP/IP
printing. So far this has not happened with parallel connected printers.
The printers in the school are all HP.

In a, possibly, unrelated issue relating to a HP Business Inkjet 3000
printer the printer will print one document and then it's listed as being
offline until you restart the printer itself. I've tried loading the drivers
onto another workstation (all workstations are running XP Pro, sp2) and the
same thing happens. This printer is connected to the network with an
internal JetDirect 610c print server card. I've spent hours and hours online
with HP's live tech support and they've had me print to the printer using
telnet and FTP printing so the print server card is actually online all the
time which points to a software issue that they can't pinpoint. Also, I've
uninstalled and reinstalled the driver multiple times following their
un/reinstall instructions.

Could all or any of this be related to a recent Microsoft update? This has
all cropped up in the past two weeks and I'm scrating a bald spot in my hair
trying to figure it out.
 
Spooler has to be running on both client and server PCs...... if it's
stopping, it's usually because of corrupted printer drivers.
 
Well, this issue has occurred after many weeks of the driver working with no
problems so I have to assume that the driver was good to begin with. They're
either Microsoft native drivers (in the case of the HP LaserJet 5, a very old
printer) or HP drivers either from the CD that came with the printer or
downloaded from HP in the case of the incident that happened today.

On the HP LJ 5 there was a change made on it's connectivity about a week
before this began to happen. I'd switched the printer from being a parallel
connected shared printer to a TCP/IP, networked printer. After changing the
printer's port in a few of the workstations' properties, rather than delete
and re-create the printer on the workstations, I noticed the rest of the
workstations beginning to pick up the printer's IP address and assign the
port on their own, much to my surprise. After this the students were sending
print jobs to this printer for over a week before this began to happen.

Today's incident, however, is for a totally different printer (a fairly new
inkjet) connected via USB to a different workstation in another room.

Is there anything that may be running around targeting printer drivers
lately? I know that's a needle in a haystack question but with Microsoft
updates changing the landscape all the time have you noticed any printer
drivers that have suddenly become corrupted for no aparent reason?

I take care of the network at our office also and haven't had any problems
here, as yet, so I always wonder about the teachers who never found a "free"
downloadable program they didn't like, despite my warnings.

I am running Symantec Corporate Antivirus v. 10 on this network and have
suspected them in a lot of things but not been able to connect them to
anything lately.
 
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