Here is what worked for me:
1. Open Regedit as Administrator
2. Find the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\ key.
3. If you are on a 64-Bit machine, browse to the "Windows x64" sub-key (else "Windows NT x86")
4. Under the "Print Processors" sub-key DELETE ALL THE SUB-KEYS EXCEPT "winprint" key
5. Start the Print Spooler service.
6. Test to see if you can Add a printer.
PLEASE NOTE: I just figured this out and haven't done much testing, so DO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I should also note that I experienced this on machines with the Thompson Reuters CS Print drivers installed. Uninstalling the CS drivers unfortunately
did not resolve the issue, but I am guessing that they are the most likely culprit. Perhaps their uninstall utility does not delete the offending registry keys as I would have expected.
We may be able to pear this down to deleting just the "Print processors" sub-keys that start with "cs" but I don't have any more
machines to test this on, so someone else will need to test this and let us know how it goes.
You will need to reinstall the CS print drivers after deleting these registry keys and repair Adobe as well (if you delete them all as originally
suggested). It doesn't appear that reinstalling the Creative Suite print drivers brings the problem back but not enough testing has been done yet to be sure.
UPDATE:
I ran into an issue reinstalling the CS print drivers on a subsequent PC.
It appears the install/uninstaller does not actually remove the drivers during uninstall and this creates a problem when reinstalling.
The easiest way to fix is to run the CS Print driver installer. At the end of the installation it will error out and tell you it could not remove the driver and give you the path. Just navigate to the path provided, delete any file starting with "cs"
and once that is done, rerun the install and it should work.
Please also note that all of the registry keys except winprt DO NOT need to be deleted. Only the "CS" registry keys need to be deleted.
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Proposed as answer by
JSB43211
Monday, November 18, 2013 10:12 PM
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Edited by
JSB43211
Tuesday, January 28, 2014 2:15 PM