Hi Stuart,
Yes, I've heard of this one a few times over the years. You do need to have a "printer installed" (really just meaning a generic one declared by going to Control Panel/Printers and Faxes, and declaring one, I think).
This is one of those things totally beyond my control. Visual Basic and/or however it's interfaced with Windows apparently thinks that if there's a print command anywhere in a program (and I certainly want to keep printing options available), it had better make an error of it, even if you didn't try to print! Thankfully, it has an easy solution, but I agree it's kind of goofy. Maybe there was a good reason for it somewhere, sometime.
Hope that helps!
Tom