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default printers keep changing

Answered default printers keep changing

  • Monday, January 07, 2013 10:50 AM
     
     
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    Hello,

    Our company has an annoying problem concerning default printers that keep changing to another one. This happens on our thinclients and laptops.

    we have 3 TS (W2K8R2), 300 thinclients and about a 100 laptops/desktops in our working environment. we recently replaced our (40) printers. we decided to run double drivers (x32/x64) and assign printers to groups by means of Group Policy. This policy does not set them as default though. As soon as all printers were in place the trouble started. people's default printers would randomly change to another printer. logging out and back on resolves notthing but default printers being changed again. I've tried different methods to resolve this issue such as deleting old drivers, cleaning out the print server, registry editing. Frankly i'm out of ideas. anyone can help me out with a definitive solution to this?

    Thank you in advance

    Door D.

    user support assistant

     

All Replies

  • Wednesday, January 09, 2013 8:41 AM
     
     
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    bump , anyone?
     
  • Wednesday, January 09, 2013 10:06 AM
     
     
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    Hi MHPBruges,

    If you are sure that it is not happens after terminal session logoff and since printer's replacement happened, it is likely that old printers connections are still sitting in the registry.

    Check HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE  \Printers\Connections hives and delete obsolete ones if exists.


     
  • Wednesday, January 09, 2013 1:18 PM
     
     
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    Hi Sergey,

    unfortunately that's not the case. It happens on both thin clients and laptops, I read that solution on another thread a few weeks ago. I checked multiple accounts for obsolete printer registry entries and all have a pretty clean registry with the correct printers in them.

     
  • Wednesday, January 09, 2013 1:32 PM
     
     
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    in this case I'd check MS Office macroses.

    If no suspect, you may also consider enabling the [Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy\Printers Policy Processing] policy and select the “Do not apply during periodic background processing” option.


     
  • Friday, January 11, 2013 3:28 PM
     
     
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    Hello again Sergei,

    searched high and low on the server but that one is non existant on that server. i get as far as [Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy] but the \Printers Policy Processing is non-existant.

    meanwhile we replaced the "action" to "update" in the GPO that added the printers to their computers/ thin clients. it didn't work either...

    any other ideas?

    thanks for replying.

     
  • Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:18 PM
     
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    Hello again,

    problem is solved... found the solution on another thread, I tried it before but didn't delete all the printer registry files , only deleted the keys from the old printerserver since those were the ones that were actually missing (after I cleaned them out on the actual server). So basically what i did was this :

    remote control user session

    I had to go and edit the users registry hive:  HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Connections (in this list I deleted ALL printer connections)

    I inevitably found old printer connections there that were no longer valid. Upon clearing those out, after a reboot, the problem went away. (this I did, cleaning the old ones, but not the faulty new ones, 2nd attempt i also did the new ones)

    I also cleared out the HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Settings key - the users had old printer settings in there also. (including a key for the driver and the gpo added printer)

    After all that i logged off the user, let them log back in. the default printers were all gone (except xps and/or pdf creator) so i added their printers again.

    after this , logging off and on again resulted in the default printer staying as it should have been.

    Many greetings

    Izzy

    • Marked As Answer by MHPBruges Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:18 PM
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