Windows 2000 Server Printers Disappear

Just a couple of days ago I discovered, on my laptop, that printers on the network (whether the LAN at work, or the LAN at home) that had been auto-detected by WinXP Pro, had lost their connection. After deleting them, I found that Windows no longer automatically redetects them, nor can I succeed with the Add Printer Wizard in finding them.

Aargh!

Has anyone else experienced and/or resolved such an issue?

I wonder if it is related to your issue. So far rebooting doesn't accomplish anything.

I have had problems, on two different occasions, where my printers evaporated on my 2000 server. The first time it was caused by a bad printer driver with a bad driver date (very messy cuz I could not update the driver because the updated driver had a prior date to the driver with the bogus date). This site helped: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;135406

Rebooting helped temporarily, but in the end, I had to get rid of all evidences of my printers and reinstall.
The second time, a mouse chewed (devoured) the coating on a data cable that was attached to a printer. When the first attempt to print to that printer was executed, the touching bare wires must have sent a weird signal to my 2000 server and all printers again went away. In the second case, I repaired the cable, rebooted the server and am looking into gettting a cat.