Windows 7 stopped recognizing the printer

Hi, ALL,
I have an interesting situation here and would like to ghet some advice.
I'm managing couple of computers for a friend's company. They have 2 computers in the office and each computer has it's own printer. One computer has Win 7, another one is Vista.
On the machine with Windows 7 the printer attached is HP LaserJet 1020 and it is connected thru USB.
Everything was working fine until couple of days ago, when the printer stopped printing. Trying to hit "File->Print" resulted in the empty print dialog with just a "Add Printer" line. When I clicked it, it says "Printer spooler does not started". So, I went to the services.msi and found "Print Spooler". It was set as "Automatic" start, but in fact was not started. I started it manually and it started without any errors and the buttons showed that it can't be started again, only stopped. Then I tried to print something. Well I got exactly the same result.
Next I open the "Devices and Printers" window. There I can see the 1 unspecified device with an icon which looks like an safe and the text as "HP LaserJet 1020". Trying to do a right click gives me a menu with just: "Create Shortcut", "Troubleshoot", "Properties". Selecting "Properties" does not produce standard printing properties dialog. Moreover hitting the "Del" button didn't work.
Next I went to the HP site and downloaded the drivers thinking that maybe it will help solve it. I ran the setup.exe it didn't give me any issues but after reboot, the "Print Spooler" was not starting automatically and I still wasn't able to print.
Next I opened "Control Panel->System and Security->Windows Updates" just to find out that the last updated was performed about 2 month ago, so it's not the recent update that caused the issue.
Next I shut down printer and the computer thinking that it might be some print job that was stuck and it will clear everything up. After powering everything up the "Print Spooler" didn't start, I wasn't able to print, but the printer was initialized during powering up, which led me to believe that there is someone who interfere with the proper printer functionality.

I'm currently running Malware Removal procedure, but I don't think it will find something.

Any suggestions as what am I facing with?

Thank you in advance.

 

My speculation would be driver issue. Have a look in add/remove programs and uninstall anything related to HP LaserJet. Next go into Device Manager and look under printers or USB (I cant remember all the categories in device manager and cant get access to it while at work) and see if you can find the printer listed. If it is there right click on it and chose remove device. You should then get prompted with an option to delete the driver or just uninstall. Click delete driver. Disconnect the printer then download and re-install the drivers and see if the problems persists

 

Hi,
Well, there is nothing in the Control Panel->Programs related to HP LaserJet.
Also there is nothing related to the printer in the Device Manager, only USB Printing support from Microsoft.

So, it looks like something is wrong with the registry?
Problem is I don't know who made it, aas nobody here can do something like this.

Thank you.

 

You may not have any software installed under control panel but the printer. IT sounds like a driver issue, but I would expect Windows to have that printers drivers within the windows driver library.

You could try re-installing it again.