I want to remove/delete printer/driver from Windows 7, and unable to find any documentation.

Anonymous
2010-05-27T13:20:50+00:00

New DELL computer Windows 7 (less than 30 days old), and want to remove/delete persistant printer/driver.

Was not able to find any documentation on the issue, and neither DELL nor Microsoft are willing to provide any kind of support unless its paid for a product/service that is less than 30 days old.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2011-06-19T11:22:13+00:00

OK, I have found the solution to this problem... the info above is correct as far as it goes, but in my case there was (a) no option to clear the print queue on two 'ghost' printers because they were disconnected and unavailable, so no option for the print queue was displayed, and (b) one was shared on the network and had a TCP/IP printer port assigned to it.

Here's how I did it, step-by-step:

  1. right-click on desktop, create a new shortcut with target as 'cmd.exe'.
  2. right-click on the shortcut, "Run as Administrator"
  3. Run the printui tool:  printui /s /t2
  4. Try deleting the printers. If that doesn't work...
  5. CLick Start > Run > Services.msc
  6. Locate the Print Spooler service, and right-click > Properties > stop service.
  7. Open My Computer and browse to c:\Windows\System32\spool\Printers

(you will need to say "oK" to get access to the folder).

  1. DELETE the contents of that folder.
  2. Restart the Print Spooler service.
  3. Go back into the printui utillity (might need to restart it using same method as above) and try removing printers again. This time it should work. If necessary, check the "Ports" tab and remove any TCP/IP ports that are associated with the old printer.
  4. Last but not least, I checked other computers on my home network to see if any of those had mapped to the old printer, and I removed those mappings, as the date of spooled documents suggested it was printed to long after it was physically removed.

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Anonymous
2010-06-02T22:13:48+00:00

You can remove print drivers that are not associated with a local printer or connection using the printui.exe tool

in an admin elevated command prompt type

printui /s /t2

Be sure to remove the driver AND the package.

Alan Morris Windows Printing Team; Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here: http://support.microsoft.com/search/Default.aspx?adv=1

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-07-26T19:54:17+00:00

    If you are having "Ghost" or duplicate printer problems, or need to eliminate what the computer is showing as "Copy 1", all you have to do is the following if you are using Windows 7...

    click start>

    click control panel>

    In the list of All control panel items click Administrative Tools>

    in the right pane Double click Print Management>

    A new window will appear.

    In the right pane you will see a list of folders (All Printers, All Drivers, Printers not ready, Printers with Jobs) If you haved duplicate printers then the folders will show more printers listed than drivers.

    double click the All Printers folder>

    Click on the printers or Ghost that you want to delete to highlight them (Be very sure of which ones you are wanting to delete!! You don't want to delete the printer name that is working for you!!)

    Once you've highlighted the items you want to delete, click the delete button at the top of the window.

    At this point if you were using "Copy 1" and want to rename that file, right click the name of that pirnter, then select rename from the list and name the printer whatever you prefer.

    if you need to delete a Driver you can use the same steps.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-08-27T17:43:45+00:00

    Thank you, thank you. I think this might have solved my problem as well. I had drivers I couldn't uninstall...said they were in use. I couldn't delete the printer associated with it because it was dimmed out. It would look like it deleted, but was still there when I went back to printers and devices and it was a dimmed out (greyed out) printer icon. I couldn't print, couldn't delete items from the print queue, etc. I searched for help on forums and got no results. I found that my security didn't seem to be associated with an active user account. (I deleted some user accounts and moved some files so they wouldn't be lost. I think this is when my printer problems began, but not sure) One of the "users" in some security settings was a long list of numbers and letters with dashes. Nothing resembling an actual user account.)

    Using the steps you gave the link for, for devices you suggested could be ghosted I went in and deleted all of my printers. Now hopefully I can reinstall and have it work properly again.

    My printer is finally deleted for good it looks like, so I can start over again.

    Thanks so much. I've been working on this for months and giving up. Printing from a different computer and dragging a USB stick around so I could do so.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-10-11T02:58:32+00:00

    Nice ... Thank You !!!

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