Printers Disappeared - Print Spooler Error Message

**virginia** · 5th January 2009

I recently had a power supply that failed and damaged one of my two 1 GB memory sticks. I replaced the power supply and limped along on the one remaining memory stick until today when I got a second one installed.

Later today I tried to print a document and discovered I no longer have any printers installed - got the following message:

Quote:

Operation could not be completed. The print spooler service is not running.

Prior to today I had a HP 1200 laser and a HP 7310 Officejet installed. When I tried to add a printer, I got another rendering of the above message. I should point out that I installed a driver for a Lexmark Z25 printer yesterday just to try it to see if it worked.

At Microsoft Help and Support, I found a fix with the following instructions:

Quote:

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
Double-click the Printer Spooler service, and then change the startup type to Automatic. This sets the Spooler service to start automatically when you restart the computer.
If you want to start the spooler service immediately, click the Start button under the Service Status field.

Didn't work. The article also suggested typing net start spooler in the Run dialog box but that didn't work either.

The printer fuction was working yesterday because I did print with the Lexmark. I considered trying to use a Restore Point prior the installing the Z25 printer but was reluctant since I had just installed the memory stick this morning. Any suggestions?

hawk22 · 5th January 2009

Have you actually gone through a new full install of your printer by uninstalling the drivers first.

**mattman** · 5th January 2009

There may have been some damage to the Windows system from the power supply blow up.

Me...I would run Error Checking (CHKDSK) on drive (drives). Unless it seemed to be OK(?) after that, I would run a repair reinstallation of Windows by booting to the CD.

Matt

**virginia** · 5th January 2009

Thanks for your inputs Matt and Hawk. I couldn't uninstall any of the printer stuff - drivers or software. Kept getting an error message. And before I started any extensive system repairs/installs, I did a bit of Googling - specific to Error 1028.

I was reading one of the hits I got at TechRepublic and it referenced using the Run, services.msc. However, in addition to Print Spooler, it also mentioned restarting Lexbce Server as well. Lexbce clicked with me as I had just installed a Lexmark printer the day before. Sure enough, when I looked at the Lexbce entry it showed as "Disabled". When I restored it, everything was back to normal.

I then was able to uninstall the Lexmark software and after I restarted the computer, the Lexbce Server entry had disappeared. So all is well - all my old printer/scanner setups are back in place.

hawk22 · 6th January 2009

Good work Robert glad it is working for you now.