same USB printers cause new hardware detection

[Terry R.]

On one network I admin, we have over a dozen laptops used for "check-in"
purposes. When I configure them for printing, I use just one of the
printers, all of which are identical. Whenever many of them are used, I
would get reports that printing didn't work.

Yesterday I reconfigured 3 laptops with one printer and checked okay.
Yet when a user hooked 3 laptops to 3 printers, two of them wouldn't
print. I was onsite at the time and found that Windows had re-installed
drivers and created copies of the printer and the default printer no
longer would print at all. A few of the laptops still have LPT1 ports
and printing that way isn't an issue. Only USB.

What would cause Windows to see each of these printers differently even
though they are all the same make and model (Zebra TLP 2844-Z)? As a
last resort, I guess we can mark each laptop specifically for a printer,
but that is a PIA, since there are many staff that also use their
laptops occasionally and if someone else is using "their" printer,
they're out of luck.

Thanks for any suggestions,
--
Terry R.

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[smlunatick]

On one network I admin, we have over a dozen laptops used for "check-in"
purposes.  When I configure them for printing, I use just one of the
printers, all of which are identical.  Whenever many of them are used, I
  would get reports that printing didn't work.

Yesterday I reconfigured 3 laptops with one printer and checked okay.
Yet when a user hooked 3 laptops to 3 printers, two of them wouldn't
print.  I was onsite at the time and found that Windows had re-installed
drivers and created copies of the printer and the default printer no
longer would print at all.  A few of the laptops still have LPT1 ports
and printing that way isn't an issue.  Only USB.

What would cause Windows to see each of these printers differently even
though they are all the same make and model (Zebra TLP 2844-Z)?  As a
last resort, I guess we can mark each laptop specifically for a printer,
but that is a PIA, since there are many staff that also use their
laptops occasionally and if someone else is using "their" printer,
they're out of luck.

Thanks for any suggestions,
--
Terry R.

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This is caused by the Plug and Play (PnP) system. Each and every
printer would have their own unique device ID and the PnP system will
re-install the newly detected printer. One possible way is to connect
these printers to a print server on the network. These laptops would
not detect the printer and you would need to configure the IP
address(es) to access these printer.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 5/21/2008 7:45 AM, and on a whim, smlunatick
pounded out on the keyboard:

This is caused by the Plug and Play (PnP) system. Each and every
printer would have their own unique device ID and the PnP system will
re-install the newly detected printer. One possible way is to connect
these printers to a print server on the network. These laptops would
not detect the printer and you would need to configure the IP
address(es) to access these printer.

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, these need to be mobile so
using a print server won't work. It looks like USB isn't "plug & play"
at least in this situation.

--
Terry R.

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[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

On one network I admin, we have over a dozen laptops used for
"check-in" purposes. When I configure them for printing, I use just
one of the printers, all of which are identical. Whenever many of
them are used, I would get reports that printing didn't work.

Yesterday I reconfigured 3 laptops with one printer and checked okay.
Yet when a user hooked 3 laptops to 3 printers, two of them wouldn't
print. I was onsite at the time and found that Windows had
re-installed drivers and created copies of the printer and the
default printer no longer would print at all. A few of the laptops
still have LPT1 ports and printing that way isn't an issue. Only USB.

What would cause Windows to see each of these printers differently
even though they are all the same make and model (Zebra TLP 2844-Z)? As a
last resort, I guess we can mark each laptop specifically for a
printer, but that is a PIA, since there are many staff that also use
their laptops occasionally and if someone else is using "their"
printer, they're out of luck.

Thanks for any suggestions,

This sounds pretty normal to me, honestly. The same thing would happen if
you had a bunch of identical USB hard drives. You would get a different
drive letter for each.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

The date and time was 5/21/2008 7:45 AM, and on a whim, smlunatick
pounded out on the keyboard:


Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, these need to be mobile so
using a print server won't work. It looks like USB isn't "plug &
play" at least in this situation.

Well, it *is* plug and play, but each printer is a new one to the computer
the first time you connect it. You haven't really explained what doesn't
work. So you connect a printer, it detects it, and it doesn't print at all?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

This happens when an USB device has an unique USB hardware
serial number. Good for USB drives, not so good for printers...

You can make Windows ignore the USB hardware serial either
for one certain product or for all USB devices. Here I've
shown how to do this for USB drives, for USB printers it's
almost the same game:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#identical_drives

You find USB vendor and product in the device manager at
the printers 'Details' tab.


Uwe

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 5/21/2008 8:59 AM, and on a whim, Lanwench [MVP -
Exchange] pounded out on the keyboard:

Well, it *is* plug and play, but each printer is a new one to the computer
the first time you connect it. You haven't really explained what doesn't
work. So you connect a printer, it detects it, and it doesn't print at all?

I did explain what happens. I configure one printer. A user plugs in an
identical printer (just not the one I used). Windows detects it as new
hardware, installs another printer. Windows will then not print from the
one I had set as default. I can't expect the users to go through the
process to reset the Windows default printer, open the Check-in program
and select a new printer every time another one is detected by Windows.
There are over a dozen printers and a couple dozen laptops for this.

--
Terry R.

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[Terry R.]

The date and time was 5/21/2008 9:49 AM, and on a whim, Uwe Sieber
pounded out on the keyboard:

This happens when an USB device has an unique USB hardware
serial number. Good for USB drives, not so good for printers...

You can make Windows ignore the USB hardware serial either
for one certain product or for all USB devices. Here I've
shown how to do this for USB drives, for USB printers it's
almost the same game:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#identical_drives

You find USB vendor and product in the device manager at
the printers 'Details' tab.


Uwe

Thank you for the info Uwe. It looks like in this instance
GlobalDisableSerNumGen would be the simplest method, except for user
laptops not used specifically for Check-in. If I try the individual
setting, is the product ID unique for each printer, or can I just enter
the vendor (Zebra) and use only one ID? If I only need one ID, I can
create a REG file to import the key quickly to all of them.

--
Terry R.

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[Uwe Sieber]

The date and time was 5/21/2008 9:49 AM, and on a whim, Uwe Sieber
pounded out on the keyboard:


Thank you for the info Uwe. It looks like in this instance
GlobalDisableSerNumGen would be the simplest method, except for user
laptops not used specifically for Check-in. If I try the individual
setting, is the product ID unique for each printer, or can I just enter
the vendor (Zebra) and use only one ID? If I only need one ID, I can
create a REG file to import the key quickly to all of them.

The product ID is identical for all printers of the same model,
somtimes for a series of model which are completely software
compatible.
So, you need one IgnoreHWSerNumVVVVPPPP=1 entry per printer model
in use.
GlobalDisableSerNumGen is not good because it changes the behaviour
of USB drives too when attached to a different USB port. When
attached for the first time to a port USB devices are detected
as new. Manually assinged drive letters become port specific...


Uwe

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 5/22/2008 12:09 AM, and on a whim, Uwe Sieber
pounded out on the keyboard:

This is the procedure used to allow multiple identical USB printers to
not trigger the "New Hardware Detected":

How To Stop USB Detection of Identical Printers

Used link below to learn how to disable detection, and then my steps to
locate the Vendor ID (Vid) & Product ID (Pid) values, and create a REG
file for importing into workstations.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#identical_drives as a reference:

1. First remove the printer from Printers and Faxes. This is required
because after the registry modification is done below, the printer needs
to be installed clean. This will be the last time you will see New
Hardware Detected for this printer.
2. Open regedit
3. Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\DeviceClasses
4. Press Ctrl-F and enter ##?#USB#
5. When Find stops, expand the sub keys in succession until you see the
Device Parameters key below it. If the printer you want is there, write
down the Vendor ID and Product ID numbers that are found located in the
prior selected key (that begins with ##?#USB#). There should be four
digits after Vid_ and four after Pid_ . Those are the digits you enter
in creating the Binary value key: IgnoreHWSerNum11119999=01, where 1111
is the Vid and 9999 is the Pid, as used in the example on the web page.
(Note: you may find multiple listings of the same printer. The Vid & Pid
should all be the same.)

If the printer name in Device Parameters is not the one, press F3. This
will bring you to the next key. Follow step 4 and use F3 each time
until the correct printer is located.

6. Per the web page, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\UsbFlags
and click on the key UsbFlags.
7. On the right side, right click and select New > Binary Value. Type:
IgnoreHWSerNum
and enter the four digits from the Vid first and then the Pid without
any spaces, and press Enter.
8. Double click on the new value and enter: 01 and press Enter.

If this will be used on multiple machines, right click on UsbFlags and
select Export. Name it something like UsbFlags and click Save (no
extension needed as REG is added). Right click on the REG file and
select Edit. I removed everything except three lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\UsbFlags]
"IgnoreHWSerNum04710302"=hex:01

The eight digits at the end of IgnoreHWSerNum will vary on every device,
so make sure yours is correct. Save the file.

Now you can merge the REG file into any workstation using identical
printers, by copying the REG file to the workstation, right clicking on
the REG file and selecting Merge. Answer Yes to add the information to
the registry.

Plug in the USB printer and Windows will detect the new hardware.
Swapping identical printers will no longer trigger the detection.

Thanks to Uwe Sieber for his web page and related information.


--
Terry R.

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