I hope someone can help. The Microsoft user forums didn't come up with anything. I have a computer running Win XP Home Edition. I have a home network with 2 hard-wired and 1 wireless workstation. We all use a printer on the wireless workstation. It's an older HP, a Laserjet 5MP. For work reasons, it has to stay with the wireless workstation. For many months, I had no problem using this as a network printer. Then, the PC to which it is attached had to go out for repair. I needed to print, so I moved the HP and hooked it to my PC (where it had previously been a network printer). It was detected and installed locally.
The other PC came back and the printer was hooked back up to it. Now, when I try to print over the network from my Win XP PC where it was both a local and a network printer, everything is incredibly slow. It takes 2 mins. or more just to display the drop-down font list in Word. It takes that long or longer just to save a document. Printing off the Web is almost impossible. Meanwhile the other hard-wired workstation can still print to the network printer with no problem.
This looks to be a driver issue. The Microsoft KB had a seemingly relevant article about installing a local port and then putting in the network path. Problem is, when I try to do this, Windows tells me the port already exists. I obviously have to use the same path, so I'm stymied.
I tried removing all printers and then was unable to install any. I had to run System Restore to get back to having any printer at all.
What is my best course of action? Can this be fixed? Am I better off just buying a new local printer? Thanks in advance for your help.
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