My laptop is being very strange.

I'm running XP Pro. At home I have a printer direct-connected to my desktop that's shared. When I got the laptop, I connected through my wireless network to the printer and printed from it no problem. I had been leaving "Print to file" or whatever as my default printer just because I carry the laptop between work and home and don't want to think about making sure I'm not printing to a non-existent printer.

Normally, whether I'm on the network or not, the printer and the "Print to file" show up in the Printers and Faxes control panel. Well, today I was working with Excel and when I attempted to perform a certain operation, it gave me an error saying "No default printer is selected" which was kind of odd. So I go into Printers and Faxes, it's empty. I was at work, so I figured I'd just add the "Print to file" back in, but when I click "Add a printer" I get an error that says "Operation could not be completed." Now I'm home, my network is up, the printer is on and shared....and it still says "Operation could not be completed."

What gives?!?!

Nevermind. Apparantly the Print Spooler service somehow stopped. I did check that already, but when I saw that it was set to 'Automatic' start, I assumed it was running. Apparantly not. Don't know why it stopped, but it's running now and all seems fine.