Thank-you FurryNutz for the suggestion, it's sincerely appreciated!
I uninstalled the printer and then uninstalled SharePort 3.0, installed SharePort 4.2 as suggested, enabled auto-detect and after a bit I received an 'install drivers', which I then did. Once this was done, it appeared that everything was back! Yeah!
I then went to the laptop, booted it, and even tho it's on SharePort 3.0, it too, saw the printer. I've since successfully printed to it. Stranger than fiction. Suggests things are a bit fickle...
I'll keep your suggestion as to re-building from scratch should I have problems again on this. Just wish my IPad could now print, but everything says won't work with DIR-825 B1, I'd have to be on rev 'C' according to the IPad AP. Don't know why that would be different, but....
Happy Holidays!