Hello Alan,
I'm hoping you can help me since I'm having a very similar problem. I'm running Win7 Pro 64-bit, and I have a HP CP1215. Printing from certain 32-bit applications crashes splwow64.exe just as described above.
I've applied the newest drivers I could find on HP's website (which are actually quite old, version 20080208), and also the most recent firmware. I've tried reinstalling the printer driver a number of times, and also applying HP's Universal Print Driver
(which doesn't work at all for this printer, apparently). Curiously enough, I didn't experience this issue at first, but suddenly it appeared, and I can't think of anything I could have done to cause this.
Thinking that the fix described in KB979681 might solve the problem, I've installed SP1 RC1. splwow64.exe has been updated to version 6.1.7601.17105 and not 6.1.7600.20623 as described in the KB article, and the time stamps don't match either (mine is 30-09-2010);
but I suppose this is because the file has been installed through the service pack and not the hotfix. Anyway, it still doesn't work; sometimes even the host application (like Adobe Reader or Word 2010) itself crashes when I try to print.
I can provide the full crash report if you're interested. I appreciate any help on this issue.
Regards,
Anders