Print spooler supposedly not running

I am trying to print from a laptop wirelessly, to a shared printer. Printer is functioning fine, is turned on. But when I try to print from teh laptop, I get an error message saying that the print server spooler is not running. Going into services.msc shows that the spooler service is in fact running, and is set to automatic. I have run a utility that stops the spooler, clears the print jobs, and restarts the service, but still this laptop (Win7) does not seem to print.

Suggestions?

 

Try restarting the print spooler service on the laptop.

 

As Paul noted, he ran a utility that does that.

Did this ever work? How is the printer shared? Through another computer? Can other computers print okay?

Have you rebooted?

You might try uninstalled the drivers, rebooting, then installing the drivers again. It would be much better if you can hang the printer off your network somewhere, either connected via Ethernet to your router, a USB port on your router, or wirelessly. Of course the printer has to be "network ready" for that (maybe not if your router supports USB printing).

Hanging the printer off your network alleviates the need to open up "sharing" on the "host" machine.

 

This is a printer in someone else's house, so progress on this thread will most likely be slow.

At any rate, I have uninstalled the printer from the device manager of the laptop (two times I think now). I'll see about updating drivers if I can.

It is currently connected to a desktop (wired), and then shared via a wireless router, to this laptop.

I'll see if I can get this printer to connect to the router. It is a "w" (Brother HL-2170w), but I've never been able to connect it wirelessly to this laptop. If I can't connect it to the router I'll look at that too.

 

If W7 or W8, it should be easy to set up wireless printing. XP is a little more of a hassle but hopefully they are not using XP.

 

No XP. Desktop is Win8, laptop is win7.

 

(Quote Bill) As Paul noted, he ran a utility that does that.

Yes, but on the laptop as well as the server?

 

Since this printer is being shared through a host PC (which is acting as the print server) then antik is right. That said, if the host PC does not have printing problems, then the spooler on that system is okay.

W8 will actually scan for networked printers and set itself up using its very extensive set of native drivers. Very nice. It even does this for many multi-function all-in-one-printing devices. W7 is not quite as automated but still pretty easy. See Install a printer on a home network.