Printer issues when playing a Steam game

[joezur]

For some time now when multi tasking, i.e. playing any Steam game (at least New World, Railway Express, and Civ 6) using one monitor and performing other activities on another, when I go to print something Windows reports that there are no printers installed. It appeared the only way to fix it was to restart my pc. But just by luck, I closed out New World the last time and tried printing my document again without rebooting windows and the printers were magically back. Any way around this? Is it some setting in Steam that makes the printer service shut down when playing a game through Steam?

[ReBoot]

Using any game boosters? Like Razer Cortex or anything similar.

[Randver]

Most printer software is extremely bloated so running it while running a game is asking for trouble and conflicts. I won't install printers to my gaming rigs just for that reason.

Running a game like New World could be limiting resources that the printer needs to function so it simply won't. You didn't specify your system specs but if you're multitasking you'd better have a beast or something is going to suffer and you'll be prone to something not working correctly.

[Sazzouu]

It is 2021... get rid of that printer already...

[Zekiran]

I've found that trying to play a game while the canon printer is attempting to do its maintenance and must for whatever reason, go through MY computer (maybe it's 'on' and thinks hey yeah lets use this one instead of the main server-computer in the house) it just. Breaks everything I'm trying to do for about a minute, and then goes back to normal.

Did have a printspool issue quite often due to that, too, check your Services and make sure that your print spooler is on.