Ok, I have a Windows 7 Pro Lab with 34 computers. I have 1 XP Pro machine with an HP laserjet attacted by USB. The XP machine is the Print Server for the lab. The win 7 computers randomly loose connection to the print server, so they will not print. Some of the print icons are greyed out and a few of them will be missing the icon all together. I cannot regain connection to the printer on any machine until I reboot the print server. I have turned off "Sleep" on all computers. I have disabled the power save mode for all network cards. So none of these computers are going to sleep or powering down the nics. Also I used the "rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /n\\SERVER\MYPRINTER" command to add it for all users. So any help would be appreciated.

do you have a static ip on the print server?? is it in a domain or just a workgroup?

Yes, computer has a static IP and we are on a Domain. We just replaced the XP computers in the lab with Win 7 Computers. Never had this problem before. Thanks,

are you mapping the printers by ip or pc name? windows 7 is giving me fits on RDP printing. once you lose the mapping can you still ping the print server?

PC Name. We are useing a print credit software package that has to have a client on the print server computer. I have not tried to ping the print server after loosing connection. But any attempt to delete the printer and readd it fails with cannot communicate with host, or something like that until i reboot the print server.

I am able to ping the server when the computers cannot connect to the printer. I found that the usb ports on the server where set to power saver mode. So I turned that off. But that didn't fix the problem. I also tried just restarting the print spooler service when connection was lost but to no avail. I have to restart the server to get it to work again.

I am having a similar issue, but I have a new wrinkle! I recently updated my clients 4 PCs to Windows 7 Professional 64bit. I have Microsoft Security Essentials installed and am using the Windows Firewall. I am on a Peer to Peer workgroup that is set up as a "Work" Private network on all the PC’s. I am using one of these PC’s as a print server via USB to a Lexmark T640 printer. The printer is using the recommended Windows print driver as requested by Lexmark. The printer is shared out and fully viewable by all PC’s. Permissions are set as Everyone has Print and Manage this Printer permissions. Still I am having the same issue as noted above. Printers on the remote PC’s see the printer and share, but are greyed out or inoperable with prints in queue after one day. They load the shared printer and keep it, but it stays greyed out as if unable to communicate. My thinking is this is something to do with connectivity of the spooler. Either a permissions issue or an incoming port blocked or something along those lines.