Hmmmmm.... download a trial version of Qimage and give that a try for printing. If that works then its something quirky with CS4.
Qimage trial version
I am successfully printing consecutive, different images from Lightroom 3 (beta.) I have printed several different images with no problems (after I figured out the print dialogue.)
And, I have succesfully printed 2 different images from Qimage. In both programs, the printer setup window (driver) pops up quickly and is responsive, never hangs, although it seems Qimage got confused because of my confusion about the print setup and kind of hung up, but a restart fixed it and it finds the printer every time.
I may install CS3 on this machine and see how it performs...I never had any printing problems with it on my other computer. I don't like Qimage so far, as it is not letting me print the image at the original size on the same size paper that Photoshop did. ARRRGGGHHH!!!!
I suppose I should mention that I printed from Qimage while Lightroom was running and vice versa. I have had Lightroom running while working in PS, but if PS is working correctly, it shouldn't matter and just put the print job in the queue/spooler. So about the only think I have yet to experiment with is whether Lightroom running may cause the problem.
Here is something else I've noticed about PS CS4 behavior. After a fresh reboot of XP, CS4 takes quite a while to load, but when I shut it down and restart it, CS4 starts much faster, almost immediately, as if a bunch of it is still loaded in the RAM, or at maybe in the scratch drive. Is there any way to flush this out?? A CS4 setting somewhere or a registry entry? I'm wondering if this is why CS4 doesn't discover the printer again upon restart.
Also, I have the OpenGL Drawing option "Off."
Here are some other settings:
>Temporary file path: d:\temp\
>Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
>Scratch volume(s):
> D:\, 931.5G, 593.0G free
>C:\, 931.5G, 776.4G free
Now, I'm wondering if the fact that I have a "Temp" folder on d: instead of a "temp" folder makes any difference.
This is pointing more and more to a CS4 problem--I may try one more complete uninstall/reinstall. Thanks for the suggestion, if I find a fix, I'll be sure to post it here.
Ed