HP Printer was working fine this morning with XP. As of tonight, I got message to add a printer. Went to Printers and Faxes, and neither printer nor scanner was shown. Tried to add them and got message "print SPOOLER service is not running." Tried everything I could find online to fix this, with no success. Could this be related to a message I have SEEN at startup for months now (it didn't seem to affect anything, so I didn't explore it further), saying "c:\documentsandsettings\allusers\applicationdata\gctopc.dll could not be found" ?? Any suggestions you can offer would be most welcome. Thanks.You may have lost the drivers for your HP printer. Hard to say how that could happen.
Use your HP CD to install the printer again. That should fix the problem.
BTW: Do you run virus scans? A malware may have DESTROYED your print drivers. This has been reported elsewhere and sometimes HP printers are the target.Thanks for the advice. I'll try it. Can I re-load the CD even if I can't get past the "add a printer" command (because that's where the "printer SPOOLING service not running" pops up)? I run Trend Micro and Malwarebytes scans daily; the Malwarebytes did find a Trojan two days ago, which may be to BLAME, even though it was removed.Install from the CD.