"all has been well for a long time."
- Can you recall
anything that has changed? Program installation or deletion? Malicious program detected and removed? ???.
"I have two computers that share one printer."
- First off, what is the topology?
-- Printer attached to one computer (A) (is this what you mean by "the main one"?), and the other computer (B) prints through the network to 'A'? -- or --
-- The printer has two ports, and both computers are directly connected? -- or --
-- The printer is attached directly to the network? -- or --
-- other?
"i get a 'print spooler not running' message and a 'RPC server not available' "
- As an administrative user:
- Right-click on My Computer, and click on Manage.
- Expand "Services and Applications"
- Click on "Services"
- Pull down the vertical scroll until you get to "Remote Procedure Call (RPC)". (Note: There is a following-listed service ... Locator. Ignore that one.)
- RPC should be in status Started.
- Scroll back up about 6 lines, to Print Spooler. That also should be Started.
The Spooler depends upon RPC. (On my system I have an IBM/Lexmark printer. So my Spooler also lists a dependency on a service named LexBce Server (which also, in turn, is dependent upon RPC)).
To change a Service, right-click on it, click on Properties, and make the desired changes.
Both RPC and Print Spooler should be set to Automatic. This will ensure that they come up when Windows is initialized.
For tuning of services I generally use the settings recommended by
BlackViperUserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1