I started getting this message on my Desk computer (Windows XP) after I pulled out the USB cable connecting my HP officejet printer from my desk computer and reconnecting it to my laptop (Vista).  When I reconnected the printer to the desk computer, the print spooler service was gone.  There is no showing on the desk computer that any printers are connected, including Adobe pdf.  It is completely blank of any printers. I tried going into the registry to restart the RPC service, which shows it is still running on automatic.  I restarted anyway to no avail.  I also tried reinstalling the drivers for the printer, but that told me the drivers are already installed.  I am at a complete loss as to what happened here, and by the way, Windows tells me that it cannot restore to an earlier point.  If anyone has any ideas, I would sure appreciate the help.  Thanks.

Just Googling with the title of your post gives me tons of ideas.
You are most certainly not the only one with this problem

But first and foremost: reinstalling drivers should not be done like you have.
Disconnect the printer and remove the drivers via Control Panel.
Restart
Reinstall drivers, preferably the latest.
Restart
Reconnect printer.

I am not saying that this will solve your problems but there is a chance that it will.

I have also experienced that reconnecting a USB device to a different USB slot can cause problems.