can't remove printers locally that no longer exist on the network

[Greg Cocks]

Hello,

Our admin was doing some (necessary) 'moving' of printers -
and I can re-map to the new ones but can't delete ttwo of
the older ones (both of an HP5500 plotter, one postsctipt,
one HPGL...)

Trying to do so gives the error message, after the
confirmation that I did indeed want to delete, "Printer
connection cannot be removed. The print subsystem is
unavailable."

Trying to look at the prooperties of either of either of
these printers gives the similar message, "Printer
properties cannot be displayed. The print subsystem is
unavailable."

Thought? Suggestons? Google was *not* my friend in this
case, and I could not find anything at microsoft.com...

TIA!
Greg
(e-mail address removed)
(if suitable, please include this address in any replies to
this post - thanks...)

 

[Greg Cocks]

-----Original Message-----
Hello,

Our admin was doing some (necessary) 'moving' of printers -
and I can re-map to the new ones but can't delete ttwo of
the older ones (both of an HP5500 plotter, one postsctipt,
one HPGL...)

Trying to do so gives the error message, after the
confirmation that I did indeed want to delete, "Printer
connection cannot be removed. The print subsystem is
unavailable."

Trying to look at the prooperties of either of either of
these printers gives the similar message, "Printer
properties cannot be displayed. The print subsystem is
unavailable."

Thought? Suggestons? Google was *not* my friend in this
case, and I could not find anything at microsoft.com...

TIA!
Greg
(e-mail address removed)
(if suitable, please include this address in any replies to
this post - thanks...)

P.S. After implementing the 'fix' at
http://tinyurl.com/56uv4, the error message is
now "Printer could not be removed. Operation could not be
completed." but I *can* get into the properties... as the
new printers shares have the same nameas the old (;'bad')
ones, I renamed the old shares and was able to delete

 

[Rula]

Easy

Open the registry, search for the sharename of the
printer, probably included in the current userAND your
user key. Delete the printer device.

Dont forget to take a backup of the registry before you
make the change, this is important if you are not familiar
with how to change reg-keys. You can make it by exporting
the actual key.

If you wanna know where to find all printer DRIVERS
installed in your PC/Server, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\E
nvironments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\

Key Version-3 is the XP/W2K3 printer drivers.

Rula RMMA