No local printer found - Vista x64

I am running Vista Home Premium x64 and am having trouble printing from some applications to a local USB printer.

I installed the already loaded HP printer driver. Can print a test page from the properties menu of the printer, can also print from notepad.exe and IE x64. I can only print after switching the port to USB

When I try to print from Word or any of the Office 2007 products, Adobe Creative Suite - including Acrobat, I get an error message to the effect that there are no printers installed. Or in the case of Firefox, it says "unknown error".

However, the printer window says there are 3 printers installed - including the PDF, the HP USB printer, and MS XPS.

To get the printer to print anything beyond the test page, I had to switch the printers properties port setting from DOT4 to USB001. Then I can print from the above apps, it seemed like progress. Using the DOT4 port, I can't even get a test page.

There are no clues in the Event Viewer.

The printer is a HP Photosmart C5580 - All-in-one. I don't think it's the printer - as I tried a different printer with the exact same results.

I tried to update the drivers, but they are the latest. I did uninstall the drivers and re-installed. I updated Vista to SP2 and that's up-to-date. I have frequently, restarted and shut down after installs/re-installs.

From Photoshop I can scan from the printer(all-in-one), but like I said before I cannot print.

Is this related to a problem printing from x32 programs in Vista x64? I'm at a standstill.

Please help, anyone!

I solved the problem!

I have Airfoil 2.7.1 - which as of today is the latest release. When I uninstalled it - restarted the computer - I could print just fine!

Further, I accidentally discovered that it's the preference in Airfoil to "Instant Hijack" that is causing the printing problem. If you disable that, close then open your apps that you want to print from (even without a system restart) it works just fine. Airfoil works just fine without "Instant Hijack" though even though it is inconvenient. There are options within the Hijack settings to exclude programs from being hijacked and I'm experimenting now with MS Word, etc . . . to see if I can have my cake and eat it, too.

I DO love Airfoil and am so happy I can keep it!

Thanks for posting the fix.