Can't delete printer!

[elturko]

Here's one that I can't figure out for the life of me! One of our branch offices called today with a shared printer problem.

While the IT person there was out of the office, there were printer issues, and an IT person from another office "helped" them with the problem. The end result of that was that one of the shared printers got its sharename changed. The name before was "LJ4100" -- it is now "HP4100"

When that office's IT person got back, she found this. One user who connects to that printer had both the old one and the new one installed. The user was confused as to which one to pick, so the IT person tried deleting the old one. No go. It said something to the effect of "Printer not available. Operation failed." (Sorry I didn't get the exact msg down.)

I did a NetMeeting to see the machine, and tried a few things (rebooting the print spooler service, removing the port, etc.), but nothing worked. I had her go to the machine and rename the share back to the original name. When the did that, I tried deleting the connection, and now the status shows as Deleting. The system event log shows that "LJ4100 is pending deletion". Again, I tried restarting the spooler, removing the port... nothing. She rebooted it and called me back. Still says Deleting... So, I had her rename the share again -- now it's back to "HP4100" and we're back to "Printer not available. Operation failed."

I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any thoughts or suggestions are VERY much appreciated!

Thanks,
Matt Schultz

 

[bcastner]

The error will eventually clear, but you can expedite things.

The general approach is discussed here in the context of adding printers.
thread779-581142 ability to delete printers is enabled with the addition of the /dn parameter. As I cannot tell from your post exactly how the share is setup, you can easily figure out the correct /d? or /g? value by doing this:

Start, Run, rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /?

This will give you a listing and examples of your deletion choices. It will not hurt things if you guess wrong once or twice, the printer simply will not be deleted.

Again this error should resolve itself over time.

The remaining issue is why there was a problem with the printer share. I strongly suggest you check the HP site to see if there is a newer version of the printer driver, and that bi-directional cable support is working properly on the device.

I had a similar situation a while ago where a user was attempting to print on very heavy card stock through the sheet feeder. It would paper jam the printer and it was very difficult to clear the entries. I got the job to print using manual feed, but the problem with clearing the queue was essentially a driver issue and the fact that someone had taken home the bi-directional cable I had installed and replaced it with an old parallel cable.