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Can't remove printers previously deployed by Group Policy Printer Deployment

JRV 561 Reputation points
2023-04-28T20:22:02.22+00:00

Back in the good old days, before PrintNightmare patches in 4Q21, we pushed printers out by Group Policy Printer Deployment. (Clarifying: Not with Preferences, but with Policies, using the Print Management MSC.) At the site I'm working on now, they were all per-computer, but the same thing applies to per-user printers elsewhere.

PrintNightmare patches, as most admins know, thoroughly broke GPPD.

Now, all workstations have zombie printers hosted by now-decommissioned print servers, and we can't get rid of them. Even brand-new user profiles inherit them.

They are removed from the printer GPOs via Print Management MSC. But because the print CSE doesn't work anymore, neither does the printer removal.

PowerShell Get-Printer doesn't even list them.

Standard users can't remove them (and never could, which is by design). Admin users can remove them, but they return.

I'm guessing that resetting Windows would get rid of them, since there's no trace left of them in Policy. But that's pretty extreme.

There are dozens or maybe 100s of references to the old print servers in the Registry, but I'm hoping only 1 or 2 of them, or flags in the printer settings, actually need to be removed. I can probably come up with some PowerShell magic to get rid of all of them--if that will address it. But I'm hoping there's a simpler way.

Anyone know a surgical way to get rid of them?

Windows for business | Windows Server | User experience | Print jobs
Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | User experience | Other

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-10-01T17:29:32.79+00:00

    Use psexec to launch registry editor as local system user. Delete offending entries within HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SWD\PRINTENUM

    Persists through sign in / out, but does not persist through reboot.

    Source: https://serverfault.com/questions/604161/deleted-printers-keeps-coming-back-and-multiply

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