Shared Printer with Vista (Port Disappears)

I have two laptops running Vista Ultimate, and a Samsung ML-1740 connected to a Windows 2003 Server via USB, and am trying to share that with my Vista laptops.

I can connect to the printer and print fine when I configure a local port which refers to the \\server\printer share (and with the Vista ML-1740 drivers installed), however when the laptops are restarted (or the spooler service is restarted), the printers goes to "Offline" and the port disappears!

What's unusual is that the port cannot be recreated, even those it doesn't appear to exist - Found that while the port looks to be gone, there's actually still the reg entry for it in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Ports but this looks to just be a placeholder rather than the actual port config - If you add a port to this list, and restart the spooler service, the port doesn't actually appear - Likewise, if I want to actually delete the "missing" port, I delete the registry entry, restart the spooler service, and then I can add the phantom port again, and then remove it properly.

What I don't understand is why when the spooler service is restarted, that the port mapping disappears and the printer subsquently goes offline? This is exactly the same case with both Vista workstations, and 2003/XP machines don't have the same problem.

It's a pain making funky registry changes everytime one of the laptops restart... :(Start Free Trial