Resolved Printer unexpectedly "disappeared"

I was printing with no problem up to yesterday. I've been doing some system maintenance, but nothing involving the printer. Today, I went to print an Outlook calendar and got an errormessage "no printer installed" or similar (sorry, didn't note down the exact wording; anyway, my system is in Italian). Tried to print a Word docx, no reaction at all, not even an errormessage. Tried to print an Excel spreadsheet, got a long message about "No printer installed. To install a printer ... etc. ".
I went to Control panel > Printers and faxes, and there was no printer listed, just the "Add a printer" option. I tried to use that to reinstall the printer, and got an errormessage "Unable to carry out the operation" (or similar, in Italian).
The printer is listed on the Hardware tab of resources manager, and shows no problem. Control Panel > Install hardware shows the printer installed with no problem.
So now I'm stuck. As a last resort I guess I could try System restore to a couple of days ago, but if ther's another option I'd prefer it, because that would wipe out all the system mainetenance I've been doing recently.
Grateful for any advice.

 

PS (in case it's relevant): Since submitting this post, I also tried in protected mode. When I opened Control Panel > Printers and faxes, there was nothing visible, not even the "Add a printer" option.

 

Hi Steve and thanks for input.
Yes, it did. So I'll try a System Restore and report back on how it pans out.

 

Yeah, that fixed it. But I had to go back three tries before the printer applet in Control Panel started working again, which meant wiping a lot of updates (last Tuesday's MS patches, etc.) and reinstalling them, plus all the maintenance I'd done in the meantime :-(

The only changes I had made deliberately to the Registry were the cleanup contained in CCleaner, usually quite mild and less invasive than Registry First Aid or similar.

Still, glad to be able to print again. Thanks again, Steve.