Ok, so I went to print something yesterday, and the print job would spool to the printer, then disappear, while nothing printed. Oh great, the printer is disconnected again.  This happens occasionally with my WiFi printer, which I leave on all the time because it also connects to Google Cloud Print, so I can print document from my phone or tablet (not that I do it very often).  Of course, when the printer is disconnected, I usually get an error explaining such, but this time, no error.

Ok, maybe Adobe Reader is broken, wouldn’t be the first time.  I’ll try printing a Word document instead… nope, same problem.  Well, lets try printing to the XPS document writer, nope, still the same problem.  Well, this is starting to suck.  Restart computer a bunch of times, re-install printer a bunch of times, nothing.  Use Windows Restore to roll-back my computer a day, 2, 5, 7, nothing.  This is getting desperate.

Ok, maybe something is really wrong with my computer, what does Google have for me?  Lets try using the System File Checker… update pending restart?  Ok, restart computer 4 more times… still pending restart?  Ok, search for solution to fix the pending restart issue, found.  Now run System File Checker… no problems found, well this isn’t promising.

Alright, I do weekly system image backups for a reason, lets restore the whole partition to last Sunday.  One hour later, still no printing.  Now this is just beyond frustrating.  No one else with this problem seems to have found a solution.  They can print from notepad, but nothing else (same here).  Well, I guess this means I get to re-install windows.  Luckily I use separate data partitions and drives, so after the Windows installation, I just point My Documents and My Music in the right place, spend all day re-installing programs, and now I’m back to normal.

This seems like a really odd corner case that has slipped through Microsoft’s fingers.  Something in the system causes the print spooler to suddenly, without warning or error, simply discard print jobs instead of passing them on to the printer.  I’m not the only one to have this problem, nor apparently the only one to not find a solution.  On the bright side though, I just cleared-out 3+ years of unused programs from my computer, and it boots much faster now.  Even Steam re-installed over itself, so I don’t have to re-download 700GB of video games.  Yay!