Ok, I'm probably not the first person to ask about this.

Why on earth, can I not see any of my connected network printers under 'Devices and Printers' of Windows 8? The devices are without question, 100% connected and registered with the OS, as evidenced from their presence within the 'Print Queues' section of Device Manager, and various software packages, when accessing the 'Print' dialog. I can't even find any evidence of the printers within Print Management! What is going on?

HI,

I suggest to temporary disable firewall and antivirus program, and re-connect the network printer for test. Also update the printer driver to the latest version

Or you can try to create another administrator account and login to see if the same issue occurs.

Hi Leo. Both of your options failed miserably, I'm afraid!

Hi!

I'm having the exact same Problem here.

It happens on all of our Win8 Enterprise machines: Printers not showing up in "Devices and Printers" but in all other Software (like Office Word). Users can print fine. All Printer Options are available. It's just not possible to set the Default Printer using the GUI.

Key Setup of our environment:

- created master Image of Win8 Enterprise sysprepped /generalize

- captured Image and put into WDS

- deployed master Image to Destination PC in Audit Mode, finalized all Drivers and finally sysprepped

- After OOBE, PCs are automatically added to the domain

Regardless of what platform the PC is, always having this issue. Can someone help please?

I have the same issue. Not to mention the  devices and printers windows takes a long time to open

I have the same issue. If we perform the power shell command get-printer , the printer is listed. We can also choose the printer under applications as word or excel. For me was the question how to get this printer as default.

1. start Power Shell as administrator and perform  the following command :

(New-Object  -ComObject WScript.Network).SetDefaultPrinter(your network printer)

see Microsoft Document dd347648

2.The second method is only a trick to get the Printer properties. Take the printer offline, try to print a document, double click in the taskbar on the printer icon you can get the printer properties and there you can define the printer as default.

I found this depends on how you setup the printer.

If it's in the list when you want to add a printer and select it, it will show up. If you tell it, it's not in the list and set it up manually using \\server\printshare then it may or may not show up.

When you choose to print in an app, it's listed. It's also listed under Device Manager as a print queue.

However, to get it to show up, change the view to some other view. My view was details. I changed it to large icons and the printers showed up. I could then change it back to detail and they would still be listed. Restarting the print spooler, disabling/re-enabling Bluetooth Support, restarting Devices and Printers, right-clicking and clicking refresh, pressing F5 for a refresh, logging out and logging back in, restarting the computer ALL have no effect but changing the view, does. Ridiculous?

The only one that is NOT listed is one setup as a TCP/IP printer and that is because SNMP was turned off, is my guess. You can still print to it from any app but you cannot select it as the default from Devices and Printers because it doesn't list. I'm going to turn SNMP back on, on the printer, to see if it will then show up and if so, see what happens when I remove it. The reason SNMP is turned off is because on TCP/IP enabled printers in Windows 8, the printer will show offline unless you delete and recreate it. At some point it loses communication and thinks it went offline.  Turn off SNMP and that problem is resolved.

For \\server\printershare I have found if you remove spaces from the share name, that will resolve those printers from showing offline sometime later. You have to create the share manually because Microsoft will offer the description name with spaces.

What it looks like is one development group at Microsoft isn't talking to another one. Microsoft, here's a clue. Go back to your old philosophy of:

Microsoft, making it simple.
Ease of use.

Hope that helps some of you.

Without warning, 8.1 is thrust upon us and with virtually no choice. We are forced to change, but that is a minor indignity to not being able to do your work, because your printer no longer has the software matching the operating system. Microsoft deserves a big "thumbs down" for insensitivity and disregard of its users. 

Same issue on Win8.1, my printers are added via GPO.

restart services, fail

restart PC, fail

wait 60 minutes and they appear.

word list them and so does command ;

C:\Windows\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\en-US\> cscript prnmngr.vbs -l

..shows the printers...

OK I had the same issue. I used Powershell to get rid of it.  from powershell as an admin I did a "Get-Printer | Select name" then I found the name of the printer I wanted. With the name I entered "Remove-Printer %myprintername%"   after that I just re-added and it all looked good.

this worked for me! Thanks. 

Didn't work for me.

Once this policy is in place, go to Regedit and create this following Entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\
Create a New Key {2227a280-3aea-1069-a2de-08002b30309d}

And Reset PC

This will create a folder on the Desktop as Printers which when opened gives only the Printer listing.

Don't nobody screw with a working Firewall to try debugging this issue.  If you can print, let it go.  MS OS is a time waster. 

Worked like a charm (making a connected printer visible in "Devices and Printers" in Win 8.1) - but a totally ridiculous "bug".  Thanks very much - you made my day!!

Preventing Windows from downloading the device Icon worked for me.

GPO -> set "Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Device Installation\Prevent metadata retrieval" to enabled

• Edited by Florian_Schneider 20 hours 59 minutes ago

Preventing Windows from downloading the device Icon worked for me.

GPO -> set "Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Device Installation\Prevent metadata retrieval" to enabled

• Edited by Florian_Schneider Monday, February 23, 2015 2:47 PM

Hi,

Restart print spooler service, the printer should appear.

OK I had the same issue. I used Powershell to get rid of it.  from powershell as an admin I did a "Get-Printer | Select name" then I found the name of the printer I wanted. With the name I entered "Remove-Printer %myprintername%"   after that I just re-added and it all looked good.

This didn't work for me either.

Hi,

Restart print spooler service, the printer should appear.

This didn't work either! I can't believe this is still an issue.

• Edited by MR JH 19 hours 48 minutes ago

Hi,

Restart print spooler service, the printer should appear.

This didn't work either! I can't believe this is still an issue.

• Edited by MR JH Friday, March 13, 2015 11:31 AM

I just did a DVI deployment using Windows 8.1 Enterprise. All printers get deployed using GPO. They show up in applications (like MS Office), but they don't show up on Devices and Printer, neither with the Get-Printer cmdlet.