Getting my OneNote printer to install

I have a new laptop with Windows 7 at home and just installed Office 2010. There was a PDF I wanted to print to OneNote to share with some other folks, so I opened the document and clicked File | Print. I got an error message that there were no printers installed. Odd, and surprising since I had assumed the OneNote Printer “Send to OneNote 2010” had been installed when I ran Office setup. Since the machine was new, I just assumed that the prerequisites needed for the printer were installed.

I looked in the Devices and Printers dialog and sure enough, there were no printers there. I know the OneNote printer needs the XPS printer before it will install. Since the XPS printer was not there, I knew why OneNote did not install the printer during setup. Windows 7 should have had the XPS printer installed already, but it was not there. I looked in the control panel \ Programs and Features application to see if the XPS printer had simply not been installed by the manufacturer, but it was checked ON:

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Next, I checked the Print Spooler service (right click My Computer | Manage | Services ) and looked at the Printer Spooler:

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I double clicked it to open the properties dialog and it was not started. For some reason, it was also set to Disabled, so I started it and set it to Automatically start when Windows boots. Now I had the XPS printer!

From here it was just a question of going back to the control panel and running Repair on Office. Now OneNote setup detected the XPS printer and installed its Send to OneNote printer. I printed the document without any more problems.

We had tested the case for the print spooler being disabled to verify the printer would not get installed at setup, but I never thought I would wind up in the scenario myself. I'm just glad I got my printer installed!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John