Remove All Network Printers from Windows 7 or 2008 R2

From a command prompt run the following command:

wmic printer where Local=FALSE delete

Job Storage Tab Missing

This is one of those stupid simple ones but when it happens again a year from now I won’t remember. When you go to print the Job Storage tab missing from your printer properties?

Looking at the properties of the printer I notice that Printer Hard Disk is set to Not installed. 

I change it to Installed.

I look back at the Printer Properties & there it is.

 

Job Storage related links:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=120&prodSeriesId=503548&prodTypeId=18964&objectID=c01841759

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=bpl12748&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=115&prodSeriesId=84028&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=84028&objectID=bpl12351#A6

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=120&prodSeriesId=412160&prodTypeId=18972&objectID=bpl12351&printver=true

Manually Feed Mid Weight Letter

<sarcasm>I love nothing more than dealing with printer drivers.</sarcasm>

After updating the driver for an HP LaserJet 4515 from the discrete PCL6 to UPD 5.2 users started reporting that the printer was not printing. The display was showing a message that said, “MANUALLY FEED MID WEIGHT LETTER”.

Looking at the tray settings on the printer all paper sizes & types were correct. Looking at the Device Settings tab for the printer on the print server the tray settings were correct as well.

 

The issue turned out to be that the paper type in the driver was set as to Mid-Weight 96-110g by default.

To fix do the following.

• Right click on the printer & select Properties.
• Click the Advanced tab.
• Click Printing Defaults.
• Select the Paper/Quality tab.
• Click the arrow in the Paper type drop-down & select More.
• Expand Type is & select Unspecified.

• Select the General tab & click Printing Preferences.
• Repeat the same steps for the Paper type.
• Click OK through all remaining dialog boxes.

Error Updating Printer Settings

I’m in the middle of updating all the HP printers on our printer servers from the various discrete drivers to the Universal Print Driver (UPD). After adding one of the printers & selecting Update Now from Automatic Configuration on the Device Settings tab I received two errors. The first said, “This command could not be completed because a printer communication error occurred.” After clicking OK the second error said, “The device ‘printername’ may not be able to print this document. Communication with the device could not be established to verify if this is a support HP device. Please specify a different device or load a driver specifically designed for this device.”

The issue was two-fold. In the web interface for the printer on the Networking>SNMP tab, SNMP was disabled. I enabled it.  I also had to enable SNMP on the printer’s Port tab on the printer server. I went back to the Device Settings tab & selected Update Now again. This time I did not get an error.

Error Deleting Printer

I ran into this one recently at work when we moved everyone to our new print server. We had already pushed out the new printers. I had a VB script run everytime someone logged in that logged each printer they had installed that was on the old printer server & then remove those printers. I noticed after a while that there were a few users who kept logging a printer on the old print server even though the script should have removed it the day before. It wasn’t the same printer for each user & a couple of the printers had not existed in a long time.

So I hop on with one of the users & browse to their printers. I right click on the printer & select delete. I get an error that says, “Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed.” The fix…open regedit. Browse to HKU\SID\Printers\Connections. Delete the key for the incorrect printer.

That fixed all but two people. They still had a printer showing up in my script. Doing a search of the registry for the offending printer revealed a few other places to look; HKU\SID\Network\lpt1, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Providers\LanMan Print Services\Servers\ServerName, & HKU\Printers\Settings. Just delete any stale entries. Now they no longer show up in my script.

Can’t Set Default Printer

Description – When trying to set a default printer nothing happens. You may even notice that there is no default printer.
Cause – Corrupt registry entries.
Solution – Open the registry logged in as the user. (You may have to temporarily give the user admin privileges so they can access the registry.) Browse to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. Is there a Windows key? If not add one. Now reboot.