I ran into this problem today and after much searching on google I was able to come together with a few solutions as well as the one that ended up working for me.

The problem seems to be a faulty printer driver that may have been corrupted or messed up by a windows update.  So if your printer had been working and now is not try the solution below.

The solution is to delete the print drivers on your system and re-download the latest drivers from the manufacture website but that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Most posts wanted me to open a “Print Management” which can be found in the control panel under administrative tools to delete the printer drivers.

The only problem is that I did not have “Print Management” under control panel because my print spooler is stopped so this was not much help.

Another way to bring up “Print Management” is to run the command “printui /s/ t2″ without the quotes.  This did bring up the “Print Management” for me but I could not delete printers because my print spooler was still not running.

My final solution that worked:

1. Unplug all of your printers
2. Navigate to where your printer drivers are stored C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS\
3. Make a new folder called OLD
4. Copy all files into the new folder called OLD
5. Go to the control panel – click Hardware and Sound – click Devices and Printers (Make note of printers deleted for step
6. Right click on all of your printers and click Remove Device
7. run “printui /s/ t2″ from the start menu / run dialog box
8. Select the printers that you deleted in step 5 and delete them.
9. Restart your computer (Your print spooler should now stay running)
10. Download the latest drivers from your printers manufacture website
11. Install the drivers and hook up the printers again when prompted to do so by the software.

Did this work for you?  Let me know if the comments.

1. Close all open applications, you can keep this browser window open
2. Open a terminal session (Applications -  Accessories – Terminal)
3. In the terminal type:

   sudo apt-get install gnome-app-install --reinstall

4. Hit enter and watch the gnome-app-install reinstall
5. All done, your Add/Remove Applications list should be working like new!

Let us know in the comments if this worked for you or if you had any issues.

Most Linux articles I have read and many Linux users that I have talked to seem to think that with Linux you will never need an Anti-virus.  At this time in history that my be true but its only a matter of time, right?.  With most any OS we can look back before it had a large market share and see that it did not seem to have to worry about viruses (Perhaps with the exception of windows :<)

Once Linux gets enough market share for it to make sense for hackers to start hitting Linux hard, then viruses attempts will start coming.  We must remember that where there’s a will there’s a way and that way will probably be found.  Viruses, spy-ware, rootkits, etc are big money and people will do anything for that money.

Personally on my Ubuntu Linux installation I use ClamAV for my Anti-Virus which seems to work great, although it is hard to find what a good Anti-Virus is for Linux.  Having ClamAV installed just gives me another reason to feel great about the security of Linux.   Now don’t get me wrong and think that I am saying that Linux is not secure because I am not, compared to Windows, Linux is Fort Knox.  What I am saying is that eventually perhaps Linux’s time will come to feel the heat just Like Mac OS X‘s time has come as of late.

As Linux users do we need to start taking the threat of an eventual virus more seriously before its to late and we start getting infected?  Let me know if you think I’m right for being worried or you think I’m just paranoid.

The meeting started off with two minute introductions where you got to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your past week or so. I stated my name and that I was the owner of TCTEKS as well as that my week mostly consists of fixing hundreds of other peoples computers (I love my job). This is a very good way to start off the meeting as in addition to me there was a few other new people attending.

After the introductions it broke down into random chatting about different subject that people brought up such as podcasts, network, and Linux of course. This lasted for a good 10 – 20 minutes and was very interesting as everyone is very into technology and Linux.

Once the chatting slowed down then we got into the meat of the meeting (60 minutes+) which is going over the weekly newsletter which can be found on the website. This was very interesting and had a wide range of targeted topics such as Gnome 2.2 now available, Don’t trust Microsoft, Netbeans, Hulu.com, etc… The discussion was very lively, spirited, and involved everyone.

After the newsletter discussion is over the meeting once again broke down into random chatting about technology subjects, Many based on what we just talked about in the newsletter as well as many others such as Cantenas, dd-wrt, etc… This goes on until one at a time people started leaving with the meeting coming to a close around 9:15pm.

Overall this was a very positive meeting and I will definitely be making this a weekly event on my calendar. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions as well as feel free to join the meeting next week as its a very welcoming atmosphere.