Printing Woes - Windows Ignoring Print Server Driver and Defaulting to Type 3

Walt Klaus 1 Reputation point
2021-09-28T15:56:12.983+00:00

I have a classroom with a printer that we've configured to use a Type 4 driver on the print server.

When the printer was initially installed, Type 3 drivers were used and the printer worked fine. Due to a recent windows update, when using the Type 3 drivers, users were being prompted for administrator credentials to install the drivers after the computers in the room were imaged over the summer.

We identified that switching the printer drivers from Type 3 to Type 4 eliminated the prompt for credentials, and switched all printers in the building to use Type 4 drivers - only after I installed the Type 3 drivers on all the machines in this room using admin credentials in testing a few different solutions.

Globally switching to Type 4 drivers worked great just about everywhere, but for some reason, in this particular classroom, all of the workstations are defaulting to using the Type 3 driver that was already installed on the PCs in the room, rather than the Type 4 driver installed and selected on the print server.

The only fix for this that I have found is to remove the printer, delete the Type 3 driver on each workstation, and then add the printer again. This wouldn't be a big deal, and should be fairly easy to automate, however, even after removing the printer, the HP driver in question is very difficult to remove; when I attempt to remove the driver in Print Management I see:

Failed to remove driver HP LJ300-400 color M351-M451 PCL 6. The specified printer driver is currently in use. Failed to remove package hpcm351u.inf. Access is denied.

The solution I've found that will ultimately let me delete the driver is to get the delete option open, but not to click the delete button. Then I stop the print spooler, and start the print spooler, and quickly tab back over to the driver deletion window and click delete. If I do it too early, I get an RPC server unreachable error, and if I wait too long, I get the above error message again.

Once the Type 3 driver is fully removed from the computer, I can reconnect the printer, and it will install using the correct Type 4 driver and works fine. I just can't for the life of me figure out how to fix this without touching every machine. Any suggestions?

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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Windows Server Printing
Windows Server Printing
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Printing: Printer centralized deployment and management, scan and fax resources management, and document services
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  1. Limitless Technology 39,351 Reputation points
    2021-09-29T10:58:56.71+00:00

    Hello,

    Thank you for your question.

    One solution you can try is to create a script to remove the HP Type 3 drivers and configure it as a logon script.
    You can utilize command named Rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry

    To remove the printer from a client enter the following command:
    rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /q /gd /dn /n\Servername\Printername

    To remove the driver from a client use the following command:
    rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /q /dd /m "Drivername"

    Below is Reference Microsoft article
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/ee624057(v=ws.11)

    On the other note I would also suggest you deploy Print Server which will be easy to deploy \ update \ remove printers in you computer network.

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