No replies after a day? For shame. I figured surely you guys'd bite on this challenge.

So it continues to get stranger. With this new "temp.domain" he's in (note his user logon still steadily shows "domain\username"), I can't set any default printers. Results are interesting. In some programs (wordpad) I can print just fine. Adobe Acrobat 6.0 then spat out an error that no printers were installed. Deleted, added back printer, updated driver, no change.

Ventured into registry, found printer settings there to be EMPTY. Tried following a ridiculously complicated MS support article of loading settings from another user profile, no dice. Tried manually weeding my way through the registry and importing the .reg file for printer configuration from his old profile, didn't allow me (administrator) permission to do so. Then opened Excel, error says no printers installed. Rebooted, opened it back up, was able to manually select printer, it printed.

Now when I say I can't set the default printer, I mean in the Printers and Faxes window, I see my list of printers, I right-click my desired one and choose "set as default" -- no error...no error, no nothing. As in none have the checkmark designating one default. So nothing simply happens.

I'm 90% sure it's related to him being trapped in this weird temp profile, and has to do with the registry not populating printer settings.

So anyway, I finally got him to ship the laptop out to me, he's on the road to send it out as I type this, so I'll finally have my hands on it so I can actually do some real work on it. Backup, reinstall, call it a day.