Hi
Thanks for your replies. I have tried with the disc that came with the printer that is marked specifically for this printer (DCP-J35W) and marked for win 7. I have also downloaded from the Brother website the Full Install package and their driver uninstall program. When I spent an hour on the phone with Brother support they insisted that I downloaded it all again. I then, under their instructions, tried again with the new downloads, and the installation disc. Same result. Everything loads up except the printer driver, and as I mentioned in the previous post, this all installed on my desktop computer with no problem.
I have checked that the print spooler is running, I have stopped and restarted the print spooler. I have tried to manually install from Devices and Drivers, and the program finds the printer on the network immediately, but the driver install stops with various messages about the printer driver depending on the port configuration that I have attempted. The most common message is "Printer driver not installed. Operation could not be completed. (error 0x00000002)." But also remember I am getting this same error code on that specific WU refering to this specific printer that appears if I try an install using a USB cable connection.
I wondered if it could be a obscure permissions issue which is one of the reasons I ended up trying Tweaking.com.
In answer to friedmonkey, no, it is not a stupid question, because someone out there might have an idea that I haven't thought of or is above my pay grade!
In answer to Shane, no, there is no other problem with any other device. I realise that this could point to the printer software, but I would stress again that it installed on my other machine (win 7 64bit) with no problem, and this intermittant WU that keeps appearing and then giving the same install error code bugs me. This WU does NOT come up on my other machine.