Thursday 29 October 2009

○ Can't remove network printer connection? Forcing removal / uninstall

If you are having problems removing a printer from the Printers folder, this may be the answer for you:

When you add a network printer connection to your computer, the printer's shared name is placed on your printers folder as well.

When you try to remove this connection later on, the computer will communicate with the server to check if that printer still exists ( don't ask why) but, even if both printer connections are pointing to the same TCP/IP address, if the printers name do not match for confirmation, it won't delete, telling you something like "No longer connected to server"

To successfully remove this printer given that there is a mismatch with the printers connection name you have to first rename the connection, follow these steps to do it:

1. Start
2. Run
3. regedit.exe
4. Go to hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\Connections

Unless you can't have access to regedit, you do not need special permissions to edit the lines as you are editing your own user hive ( HKEY_CURRENT_USER) . I advise you however not to mess with anything else if you don't know for sure that it is safe.

5. Rename the printer's name to match the one on the server

6. You should now be able to delete the printer connection.


I hope this helps someone as i struggled a couple of hours to find a solution but not even google helped me right away, so here's my contribution.



1 comment:

  1. Whe're having this problem. If your solution works, you'ld be our hero. Thanks from Belgium.

    ReplyDelete