Windows 7; Printers Have Disappeared; Printer Spooler won't stay running.

I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium and an Epson Stylus Photo R220 printer. I also had a few virtual printers (ie: Snagit) installed before the problems started.
All of the printers (from my Devices and Printers) have disappeared, except for a generic "USB Printer" selection that shows it is my Epson R220. I can't print to it, and when I try to print a document and try to "Add Printer", a warning pops up saying "Can't
Add Printer. The local print spooler service is not running. Please restart the spooler or restart the machine." I've tried both with no success.
Sometimes, when I try to start the Print Spooler, I get a message "Error 1067: The process terminated unexpectedly." or it starts and just stops again.
I have also tried reinstalling the driver for my printer as specified from Epson's website, but the installer can't detect my printer, and if I try manually finding the port, nothing comes up, which I find odd since my computer recognizes when the printer
is attached.
Lastly, and I'm hoping it's not connected although I think it likely is, last night my computer had troubles starting Windows. So I did as it directed and I loaded my Windows CD into the computer and had it "Repair the problem". After several minutes, Windows
booted fine again.
Now I really don't want to have to reinstall Windows, as that will remove all of my program files, so I'm hoping that's not the only solution. Any ideas?

I have wrestled with this issue on a client's computer for a few days now and I am coming to the conclusion that a Windows Update (do not know which one) has caused the problem.
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installation
Printers disappeared from Devices and Printers and from the list of printers within applications.  A reboot does nothing and there is a DCOM error that occasionally pops up, but the client has only seen it and I don't know the specifics.
Any attempt to start the Print Spooler gives me a 1053 error, which is "The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."
Doing a NET START SPOOLER from a command prompt gives me "The service is not responding to the control function."
As a last resort I did an in-place upgrade of Windows 7 (run setup on the installation DVD from Windows - not from boot - and choose the upgrade option.  All Windows system files are restored and user information is left in tact.)
This completely solved the problem.  After doing this, however, the Windows Updates need to be brought up to date, so I went through the updating process.  15 minutes after I left, the client called me and said his printers were gone again.
I have come back today to figure this out and after trying a couple more things I decided to do a System Restore, the last of which was created before the installation of Windows Updates.  After running restore, the system rebooted and all printers
were there and the spooler was running normally.
Because I thought there was some other issue, I again ran Windows Update to bring back the same updates I had done before.
Guess what?   No printers, spooler not working.
I am now going to restore again to before the 64 windows updates that installed and turn off the automatic update function until Microsoft figures out what is wrong and comes up with a patch.
This is what I believe the problem is.  I am going to look at the list of updates and check to see if Microsoft did a DCOM update, because that might be the problem, since DCOM is a dependency of the spooler and because there was some kind of DCOM error.

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