Officejet 6500 and word 2007 ctrl-p never prints just sits in the queue

Question

just set up an officejet on a windows XP machine...and oddly, word 2007 won't print if i select file->print OR ctrl-P.
clciking the tiny printer icon to prit without a dialog box works fine.
but if i want just page one i can't do that from that click.
other applications seem to print fine.
when ctrl-P is plressed and ok selected on the following dialog box a print job appears in the printer queue and reads "spooling" but never comes out of the printer.
i altered the print queue to not spool and instead the job reads "printing" and never appears.
if i quit word with a job in the queue word gives me a warning that quitting word will cancel the printing jobs. and quitting word does just that, the jobs are removed from the queue.
...and just to be clear i can print fine if i click on the one click printing icon in the icon bar directly above the document and below the menu bar.
what's the fix for this?
thanks!

Answer 1

Well...the 'solution' I received from HP Support was to add a new printer (Deskjet 990C) and make it the default printer. Once I did that, all printing issues went away. The tech person did say there were some compatability issues between the Officejet 6500 printer and Vista, but would not elaborate.