OK, we have success ..finally!
After installing the lj851en driver, we had the same problem. Worse yet, I couldn't delete any printers (there ended up to be a few) from the Printers folder without getting a blue screen.
Then I got an email from <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q252/4/14.asp">MS</a>, pointing to a problem caused by <a href="http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/faqs/win3/5192.html">Quicken 2000</a> which results in the error message, "Fatal exception OE has occurred in VXD mrtRate (01)."
I still had problems after this fix ('another program using the printer port LPT1'), and finally cured all problems by going into Safe Mode, deleting all printers, using msconfig to eliminate most every running program (including HP's Printer Toolbox utility), and reinstalling the latest printer driver.
So this was a tough one, and I thought ya'll might want a record of how it was fixed.