I only have one printer -- a HP825c and it is working fine now. I share this printer with my other networked computers and it works fine with them also. My printer is connected to my computer by a usb cable. My problem is that I have many printers listed in my printer folder on my computer and my sons' computers. My computer shows 6 printers. They are titled as (MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENT IMAGE WRITER) and various other names. I think most of them got listed when I was setting up printer sharing on the network. One of my sons computers shows my printer ok, but has the same printer listed again only with the word AUTO in front of the name. My other sons computer has my printer listed 3 times. Two of the listings also have the word AUTO in the name of the printer. I am writing because my printer was printing very slowly. I discovered that my printer was not being used as the default printer on my computer. I thought I had it set as default as it has worked fine the past 6 months. I don't know why all of a sudden the microsoft image writer became the default. My question is --Can I delete all the other printers showing in the printer folder or are they there for a reason. If I can delete them, then do I just right click on the icon and hit delete? I reinstalled my driver for the hp825c by going to the hp website and downloading the driver but I see it was dated 2001 and it probably is the same one I had. I reinstalled it anyway. One other thing that bothers me is that my printer showed up with a big yellow question mark in device mgr. before I reinstalled the software for it last night but now I don't see it at all even though the printer is working fine. All I can find is usb printer support under the universal serial bus controllers folder. Under usb printer support under the properties general tab it lists my printer at Location 0 and shows the name 825c. Under the driver tab it shows Microsoft as the driver provider and the date as 7/1/2001 and version 5.1.2600.0. I have xp pro sp2. As I said , my printer is working fine with all my computers. I just want to delete all the other printer choices without doing any damage.
Thanks in advance.

That's exactly were the "Auto's" came from.
If you open explorer and click Tools>Folder Options>View tab, you'll see "Automatically" search for network folders and printers" selected. Hence, the "Auto" designation. If you remove the printers with the Auto designation and that setting is selected, it'll just search for and re-install the drivers "automatically" over the LAN.
That said, what you can and cannot delete is a matter of trial and error as far as the "HP825c" and "Auto HP825c" listings are concerned. Ones that do not work and "exact" duplicates can be removed by right click> delete.
"MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENT IMAGE WRITER" was added by Office and is used in scanning.
Even if you have no scanner now, leaving it there doesn't hurt anything and you might even use it in the future. I'd let that one stay.

Thankyou HitSquad for this info. I appreciate it very much.