Hi One of our clients have a office full of PC's in a 2003 Domain, Some PC's are windows 7 proffessional 32bit, I am facing a problem with one of the Windows 7 machines, at random times the printer looses its ports and the user is unable to print, the only way to get the ports back is to remove the printers, restart the machine and then add the printers again. the printers are shared from windows server 2003. Do you have any suggestions? Regards Mahesh

Hi, After checking this issue, I would like to confirm the following details: 1. Were there any error messages when the Windows 7 cannot print? If so, please provide the error messages for us. 2. Could you access the shared folder in Windows server 2003 when you lost connection to shared printer? Based on my research, this may be caused by driver conflict or printer spooler issue. I suggest you take the following steps to check the result: 1. Download the latest driver in manufacturer website for your printer, and then install it in Windows 7. 2. Based on my research, when printer jobs start, Print jobs are sent to the printer as spooled files. This means that the files are put in a temporary location so that the printer can access a print queue and print jobs at its own speed. Thus, we can clear the printer spooler files to check how it works: Clear Printer Spooler files and enable the spooler service: 1) Click Start, type "Services.msc" (without the quotation marks) in the open box and click OK. 2) Double-click "Printer Spooler" in the Services list. 3) Click Stop and click OK. 4) Click Start, type "%WINDIR%\system32\spool\printers" in the open window, and delete all files in this folder. 5) Click Start, type "Services.msc" (without the quotation marks) in the open box and click OK. 6) Double-click "Printer Spooler" in the Services list. 7) Click on Start. In the Startup Type list, make sure that "Automatic" is selected and click OK. Hope it helps. Alex ZhaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.