Strange that, I spent a while last night with the same symptoms. On switch on, a windows installer dialogue box would appear, appear to do something for a while and then disappear. Evry time I tried to print anything it went into the queue and stayed there.
Eventually I realised that there was a copy of my printer installed in the printers and faxes section of the control panel and that it had become the default. I deleted the copy and reset the original one to be the default. The installer and printing problems have all gone.
Interestingly, Richard, that link is to the HP website and I have a HP printer. I had been visiting the HP site but had not installed or uninstalled any software. I had just done a windows update however.