printer ports disappearing

[lagg]

I recently installed a printer and on an XP machine which is peer to peer networked with 5 other machines. Each of these other machines has a shared local printer. My problem is with the first machine the printer sporadically stops printing. When I check out the properties and look at the port settings of printer, all ports have disappeared! The list is blank. Once I restart machine the ports appear again and the printer starts working again! Any ideas why this is happening and what I could do to resolve it?

 

[Michael52x]

Are workstations being turned off?
Is the printer mapped or installed on each workstation?
Do you use a hub/router?
Turn off DHCP and make a static IP

"Impatience will reward you with dissatisfaction" RMS Cosmics'97

 

[lagg]

nope all work stations are staying on. All printers are installed locally and then mapped from machine number 1. We are using a router, all machines have static ip addresses. The printer issue is only happening on machine 1's printer. All other printers continue to work!

 

[lagg]

Update:

The same error has occured again. I stopped and started the printer service. Hey presto the printer started working again. What is the story with that I wonder?

 

[cmeagan656]

On machine number 1 do you have any "printers" listed that have been installed by other programs?

I once had this problem with a "printer" installed by Adagio (accounting program). It was only used by the Adagio program but was sometimes selected by users accidentally when they were trying to select the colour printer which was listed directly below it. If it was selected and an attempt was made to print to it then all printers "disappeared". Stopping and starting the print spooler repopulated the list of printers. I got around the issue by only allowing the users of Adagio to access the Adagio "printer".

Hope this helps.

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