I have been having this problem for the last 2 months. At first, when printing from Word, I would get an error message that said "Word can't print due to a problem with the printer setup" and I could bypass this problem by closing my document and re-starting Word. In the last week, I do not get that message anymore but instead get no response from my printer, no status bar showing that it's processing and nothing shows in the printer queue when I open it to see if there's a document printing. Restarting Word doesn't seem to help anymore either.
I have run the troubleshooter for Windows and it will get hung up on "checking the spooler service." I literally left it in that status window for about an hour while I worked on other things. I have uninstalled and re-installed the printer drivers and Microsoft Office.
It's curious because it will print 2-3 documents for me then as I go on about my work, the printer will stop responding. I know when I have a problem because Word will not show my Xerox machine as my default printer any longer and it will want to print to my co-worker's Brother machine. At that point, I can't print to her machine either. I am inclined to think it's something in Word that's causing the issue but I'm stumped. I don't print anything with heavy graphics, mainly legal documents that are all boring Times New Roman text.
Any ideas?