Apps crash when printing to a shared printer over wireless

Question

Hello to all,
I have a strange printing problem that I cannot figure out.
At home I have an iMac wired to a DSL/wireless router, plus two PowerBooks that connect wirelessly to the network. All computers run 10.4.6. Everything has been working very well, until this problem.
We recently got an HP Laserjet 1012. According to HP's website, the driver is included with Tiger. Indeed, all 3 computers can print fine to it when directly connected via USB.
WIth the printer connected via USB to the iMac and printer sharing enabled in it, I can print fine from one of the laptops via wireless connection. However, when I try to print from the other laptop, simply trying to select the printer from any application causes that apps to crash.
I have tried all the obvious thigs, like deleting and re-creating the printer queue in all computers. No luck.
Incidentally, we also have a canon color inkjet printer connected too to the iMac via USB, and we can print to it from all laptops without any problems... It is just that one laptop and the laserjet!
Any help will be appreciated
Many thanks,
Marcelo
PowerBook   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

I don't intend to be rude, but your answer seems pretty generic. I could basically copy paste it to solve anything.
The first steps you mentioned I did with no success in solving the problem. Your other steps (update or re-install) might solve the problem, but it does nothing to identify it. Re-installing the system is not an option to be taken lightly and I consider it a last resource... I have a lot of time invested into having things working my way in the and a re-installation as you speak would mean spending more time configuring everything.
Re-installation is also a valid solution when there is one "weird" problem going on with one user. In this thread alone there are 5 people with the exact same problem, different printers and different applications behaving the same way so it does seem like a system error, but not a freak error. It seems as if theres a problem with wireless sharing of printers. I also found other threads with people having similar or identical problems... it seems to be more of a general thing.
I appreciate you trying to help, but unless you tell me you have replicated the situation and haven't found a problem, I'll keep waiting and looking for a better solution than to re-install os x.