Windows 10 2004 printer displaying issue

Question

Hello everybody,

we have some problems with displaying printers on Windows 10 Enterprise 2004 (Build 19041.508).

The printers are not displayed with the host name in the control panel. Instead, there is the model name of the respective printer. These display problems are also present in the Windows settings. If you choose one of the printers as default, the hostname appears in the control panel. If it is no longer a standard, it loses the host name again.

In addition, it takes more than 10 minutes to install a printer. Additional printers pending for installation will extend this time.

If you use a program such as Microsoft Word, all printers are correctly displayed with their hostnames in the printing area, even though the installation / setup of the printer in the control panel has not been fully completed yet.

Is there a known problem with the current Windows version? Is it related to drivers or driver versions?

I hope someone can help / support us with the problem.

Best regards

Answer 1

I've come up with a way to implement the workaround via 2 additional group polices that may help everyone here until MS deals with it.

First Group Policy

Create a policy for executing an Immediate Scheduled Task (Computer -> Preferences -> Control Panel Settings -> Scheduled Tasks -> Immediate Task) for the purposes of running this single line PowerShell script

Key elements to configure in the immediate task (General Tab) are: 1) set "When running the task, use the following user account" to NT AUTHORITY\System, 2) check the box for "Run with highest privileges", 3) change the "Configure for" drop down to Windows(R) 7, Windows Server(TM) 2008R2.

Key elements to configure in the immediate task (Action Tab) are: 1) action should be "Start a program", 2) "Program/script" should be C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe, 3) "Add arguments(optional)" should be -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -command "Get-ChildItem -path:'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\PRINTENUM' | ForEach-Object {$regkey = (Get-ItemProperty $_.PSPath); Set-ItemProperty -Path $regkey.PSPath -Name ConfigFlags -Value 0}"

Second Group Policy

Create a policy for restarting the Print Spooler (Spooler) Windows service (Computer -> Preferences -> Services -> Spooler)

The only thing that is required is to set the "Service action" to Restart service

Policy Ordering Notes

Make sure you set the execution order of the policies in the proper execution order by reordering the link order of the policies on the OU(s) they are applied on so that your printer deployment policies come first, the Immediate Scheduled Task policy comes second, and the spooler restart policy comes third.

Other Notes

In our environment we are also setting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Metadata\PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork = 1

The PowerShell script is only useful once the registry keys exist, which only happens after the deployment/driver install is initiated (which is slow), so essentially you can either wait for multiple group policy check intervals to occur, or if you are on a new system (or are in a hurry) just simply keep launching gpupdate /force from a command prompt on the target system until all the printers show up as desired.

With this workaround I was able to drop the deployment time of 5 network printers from a WS2016 print server on W10 20H2 clean load from 20+ minutes to under 5 min, and have all the printer name show up correctly. (All HP LJ printers and MFPs, all Type-3 drivers)

I can also confirm that our enterprise did not experience any issues prior to W10 2004 (W10 1909 deployed printers almost instantly without any workarounds).

Raw PowerShell Scripts

Get-ChildItem -path:'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\PRINTENUM' | ForEach-Object {$regkey = (Get-ItemProperty $_.PSPath); Get-ItemProperty -Path $regkey.PSPath -Name ConfigFlags}

Get-ChildItem -path:'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\PRINTENUM' | ForEach-Object {$regkey = (Get-ItemProperty $_.PSPath); Set-ItemProperty -Path $regkey.PSPath -Name ConfigFlags -Value 0}

Answer 2

Well this plot has thickened...

I received new PC's running Win10 21H1 and I noticed that they weren't get ANY printers deployed to them. I double checked that their computers were in the correct OU and everything was correct.

Guess what? Version 3 (type 3) printer drivers are no longer deploying to Windows running 21H1 - PERIOD. No Oce, no HP, no Ricoh, no anything we have.

So check this out - I download the V4 Ricoh universal driver and install it on the Print Server, I deploy copiers to the PC's and voila, they deployed just fine! But wait! Yes they do, but they are half baked, using the Microsoft Point and Print drivers instead of the Ricoh drivers... That means many full featured options are not available.

So I check the server, and the drivers that are showing are in fact Ricoh, and when I go to printer preferences, they are full featured Ricoh options, HOWEVER, when they roll out to the PC's, somehow that driver information doesn't get passed along, and the PC reverts it to the MS Generic drivers.

Lovely...

So as a test, I wanted to verify if it was my 2019 print server that was the source of my issues, so I installed the Ricoh from scratch, on a new Win10 PC and I shared it. I then went to a different Win10 PC and I browsed to that PC to install the printer via a network share, and it installed just fine.

But guess what? Yeah, those drivers are the MS generic drivers as well, not the Ricoh drivers that are being shared.

So that confirm that this issue is not related to my print server at all, this is some sort of failure with Windows 10 21H1 and printer deployment (or maybe even with Ricoh as well). Who knows, it might also have a little to do with PrintNightmare as well (look that up in case you haven't heard of that security patch).

But the bad news is that HP and Oce don't make V4 drivers, so I am screwed trying to deploy them to Windows PC's running 21H1...

Answer 3

We setup a GPO to push a scheduled task to run this command "powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\PRINTENUM*" -Name "ConfigFlags" -Value 0". We set it to run as system every hour. A print spooler restart or full PC restart is needed for the reg change to apply. Its a "workaround" for now until MS/Ricoh figure this crap out. In theory you could add a restart of the spooler within the task as well, and use the conditions section to have it only run if the computer is "idle", that way it doesnt restart the spooler when a user is trying to print.