I have an XP box with issues reinstalling an HP 3050 MFP after fixing the print spooler. The spooler was crashing over an over and had been doing this for about 3-4 days. So, I ran Cleanspl.exe, MS's tool. This stopped the spooler from crashing then I went in and completely removed all the drivers for the HP printer.  

Here's where I started to run into problems. I then tried to reinstall the printer and it kept asking for a randome hp****.dll, .sys file that was on a cd. I also noticed the printer kept installing as a DOT4 under USB controllers in devmmgt and showing up under 1284.3 compatible printers? I had never seen this before. Then I realized that the USB Monitor entry was missing from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintMonitorsLocal Port So, I added it back with the appropriate string in the "USB Monitor" key. However, this didn't give me USB 001 and USB 002 in the printer ports but instead it gave me DOT4_001, DOT4_002.  The Standard TCP/IP Monitor was also missing, after adding it back it showed as you would expect and connected up fine the the network copier.  (see screen shot)

The HP printer continues to install incorrectly and even though it's showing up in the ports section it's not showing as an installed printer. I've tried system restore, deleting all driver files, deleteing entries in the spooler folder in system32, SFC /SCANNOW, and system restores aren't working for some reason either.  

Please see these screen shots for more clarification and note that even though you can't see it all LPT, COM ports are available. 



Software/Hardware used:
Dell Optiplex 360, Windows XP Pro, HP 3050