Hi all,

I've suddenly got a weird problem with a company supplied laptop
(XPpro SP3, 32-bit) for which I have "power user" but not admin
permissions. IT has been less than helpful (as usual) so I'm hoping
there is something I can do myself.

I have a large number of network printers available - over 40 - but
for the last couple of weeks I have experienced application crashes
whenever I try to select a printer from the print dialog. It doesn't
matter which printer I try to select - any choice from the list causes
a crash. I can print from or cancel the dialog as long as I don't
touch the printer list - just using the default printer works fine. I
can open the printer list in the control panel and change the default
printer, so I have a painful workaround at least.

The crash happens regardless of application so I figure it is a
systemic problem. The error messages vary and I've seen no
consistency - the crashes appear to happen in a number of DLLs at
varying addresses. I've submitted a number of crash dumps to
Microsoft, but there have been no solution suggestions yet and a
search of the knowledge base turned up nothing useful.

IT removed and then restored all the printers, and now I can change
printers when on the office internal network, but I still experience
crashes whenever I work remotely by VPN - which is quite often. Since
the crashes in the office have been fixed (at least temporarily), IT
has given up - they have never been very helpful with VPN problems.

So far I haven't found anyone with a similar complaint. But I'd like
to fix the problem. Has anyone seen this before? If so, how was it
fixed?

Thanks,
George