Reliable procedure/tool for removing print drivers in Windows 7 (domain environment)
- by ultrasawblade
One of the troubleshooting steps in resolving printer-related issues with any version of Windows is to remove installed print drivers and then reinstall the drivers. This is a domain environment and drivers are pulled from a print server.
I've had occasion to need to do this on a user's system running Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. These procedures don't work:
Removing the printer from Devices and Printers (doesn't remove driver obviously)
Doing the above, going into Server Properties, and attempting to remove the driver (fails with a "driver in use" error)
Opening an empty mmc, adding the Print Management snap-in, and attempting to do the above.
Doing sc stop spooler and sc start spooler before doing both of the above
Now I know it's possible to remove drivers with the spooler service stopped and then going into the spool directory, as well as deleting registry entries.
I'm asking if a tool exists to do this where I can just select the driver in question and it be removed.
