I have an annoying problem that's causing confusion for users. We have printers set up on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine all published in AD via print manager and then deployed through group policy. For all my XP, Win7 machines the printers show the user friendly Share Name in devices and printers. This is important because we have a lot of the same make/model printers. In Windows 8 the Printer hardware name (i.e. HP LaserJet 600 M601 PCL6) shows up mulitple times, but not the friendly share name (Carbon, Onyx, Graphite, etc.) that each printer has as a sticker on the front. So a user has no idea which printer is in their physical area.

The printer properties shows the share name correctly, but the devices window is just filled with identical printers. Again, this wasn't an issue pre-Win8, they display correctly there. Anyone have an

See if this helps.

Printers not appearing in Active Directory search by Shared name
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverDS/thread/1b675ffc-0ba9-4d75-a009-d2f5b80c8010

• Marked as answer by Boo_MonstersIncMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, June 06, 2013 7:48 AM

Same problem here...

The Windows/Shared name (i.e. HP Laserjet JOHN) is correctly shown on Windows 7 Workstations and 2008 servers but when a user logs on to a Windows 8 Workstation, the display name is pulled out from the driver section.

Regards,

• Edited by Ultra-IT Monday, August 19, 2013 11:02 AM

This is not the answer to the OP's question. The link does not help with their situation.

Windows 8 clients in a Windows Server 2008 R2 domain & print server.

We have the same situation with multiple printers being the same model, confusing end users. Windows 8 clients do not show the printer's name or share name. It is instead the printer's model name and version. So dumb!

So the question is why does the name display correctly in Windows 7 but not 8?

I have found this exact problem with the exact driver you referenced to be exact.  Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

Exactly, the answer provided does not address the issue.  The share name is displayed correctly by Active Directory and the printers are listed in Active Directory appropriately to include all attributes.  The problem is that when we add the printer to a Windows 8 OS it displays the printer driver as the printer name.  This causes confusion to our end users when they map multiple printers that share the same driver.  I will note that this doesn't seem to be a problem with all printer models.  For example Xerox shared printers display correctly while it seems that HP printers do not.  

I have done some narrowing down of the issue.  It appears that if Windows starts and is not connected to the network the printers will show the correct share name.  Once the connection is made to the server the printer name immediately changes to the Model name of the printer.  I suspect this is something that will have to be corrected on the server end.  So far it only appears to be my HP shared printers that have this problem. 

• Proposed as answer by kimkida Tuesday, May 06, 2014 5:25 PM

Sorry wrong button - it's not an answer. But...

We have same problem with HP M600 printers and surely the problem is on the server (driver). From my point of view is the problem in the printer driver - it populates its own name in stead of the "given" name and the share name. This must be a bug made by HP, so I will contact them. I hope you will hear from me with a solution after this contact.

Some of my users PCs display the actual printer name, some users PCs display the share name.
I think, the users who display the printer name, have installed the printer via unc, \\servername\herearemyprinters printername

& the users who display the share name, have installed via web/browser http://intranet.htm printerinstallationlink

Anyone make any progress on this at all?

Had an issue where on our Windows 2008 R2 Print Server under Devices and Printers its printer was named correctly Hospital-ICU_HP and shared with the name Hospital-ICU_HP. Once added to a Windows 8.1 station via the print server under Devices and Printers on the Windows 8.1 station the name of the printer would be the name of the driver something like Enterprise 600 M601 ...... but if you check the properties of the printer it would show the correct name Hospital-ICU_HP. Fix: replaced printer specific driver with HP Universal PCL6 driver on the print Server. note:didn't have time to fully troubleshoot the problem

I have a similar problem. Interestingly if I set a printer as default, the share name populates. however, it does not stick when you set a different printer as default. very odd... 

Update, my tech, was able to find out that by turning on Network Discovery the printer names populate. 

Chris

• Edited by oeohfppe 9 hours 57 minutes ago
• Proposed as answer by oeohfppe 8 hours 51 minutes ago