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The magic of using Print Management

adminhardware, Microsoft0 Comment
4 min. reading

I have spent my entire life with Windows (starting with Windows 3.1) and I have never ever found before how cool application we have there. It seems that Print Management in Windows can solve problems that were unsolvable before or can make solving some other problems much easier.

Cannot remove pesky “OneNote (Desktop)” driver that keeps returning? Your network printer has stopped printing suddenly? Well, go ahead and give it a try…

Get it!

It’s already there. You just need to:

  1. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog.
  2. Type printmanagement.msc and press Enter.

Get rid of “OneNote (Desktop)” or any other printer

If clicking Remove in regular Printers & scanners applet doesn’t work at all (printer remains) or if you printer returns a couple of days after you remove it, then get rid of it using Print Management.

That is:

  1. In the left pane, expand Print Servers → Your Computer Name → Printers (or optionally Print Management → Custom Filter → All Printers).
  2. Right-click your printer (i.e. OneNote (Desktop)) and select Delete.
  3. Confirm, by clicking Yes.
  4. In the left pane, switch to Print Servers → Your Computer Name → Drivers (or optionally Print Management → Custom Filter → All Drivers).
  5. Find print driver corresponding to your printer (i.e. having OneNote in name).
  6. Right-click and select Delete.
  7. Confirm, by clicking Yes.
  8. Restart your computer.

These should remove the OneNote (Desktop) pseudo-printer (or any other printer) permanently from your system.

Network printer doesn’t print anymore

First thing to check (and the only that I had to check in my case), is to see, if your network printer’s true IP address matches the one that is set on your printer driver’s port.

To do this:

  1. Locate your printer using method described above.
  2. Right-click it and select Properties…
  3. Go to Ports tab.
  4. Without touching anything on the list, click Configure Port… button.
  5. Check if the value in Printer Name or IP Address field matches the one reported by your printer.

If it is — then your problem with network printer not printing documents has some other source and this article won’t help you, sorry.

If it isn’t — you may try to change it, by entering a correct IP address and hitting OK button twice. But you will most likely hit the wall with error saying that a device or resource is in use. This is normal, you can’t change active printer port’s configuration.

Instead:

  1. Click Cancel button in the window with Printer Name or IP Address field.
  2. Click any other item in the list and click Apply.
  3. Click back the item under which your printer was selected before.
  4. Click Configure Port… button.
  5. Set new IP address in the Printer Name or IP Address field.
  6. Click OK to confirm and close both windows.

Restarting your PC shouldn’t be necessary. You may try to print now. If you have provided a correct IP address for your network printer, it should now print without any problems.

Conclusion

The Print Management application (or actually old, good Control Panel’s applet) is a powerful tool that can help you fix or resolve many issues. Even if you haven’t found a direct solution in this article, I’d suggest looking around Print Management tool, to see, if it can help you with your problem.

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