Default printer keeps changing
I've noticed an issue happening with a few Windows 7 machines. They are all running Windows 7 Enterprise. Recently we had moved from a Server 2003 box to a Server 2008 R2 box as our print server. This issue seems to be happening on desktops that don't have location-aware printing. On the old print server, to deploy a printer we would go into print management, select the printer, then deploy via group policy. To my knowledge there's no way to define a default printer using that method(nor would I want to), and we're not using group policy preferences to deploy these. What happens is every single day people will change their default printer to the printer they want only to find the next day it has changed back to something else (in our case it's usually CutePDF or XPS). This is getting extremely annoying, is there any way to fix this?
July 28th, 2011 2:43pm

If it helps, i'm seeing a ton of 823 Event IDs in the event viewer on the specific machine i'm looking at. "The default printer was changed to Adobe PDF,winspool,Ne03:. See the event user data for context information." DefaultPrinterSelectedBySpooler 1 OldDefaultPrinter \\XXXXXXXX\mihq-printer120 NewDefaultPrinter Adobe PDF,winspool,Ne03: Status 0x2 Module spoolsv.exe
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July 28th, 2011 2:55pm

Also, I am able to replicate this issue. I set the default to what I want, then restart the print spooler service, and the default will change back almost right away. Something I noticed though is that when it changes, connections to network printers have a yellow exclamation point next to them, I assume that means there are connections issues.
July 28th, 2011 3:45pm

Hi, Thanks for posting in Microsoft TechNet forums. Please go to Devices and Printers, right click on your default printers and set it as default. If it does not work, please navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\Device, export this registry from another working administrators profile, and import it to the problematic machine. Please be noted that registry modification may endanger Windows functionality severely, please do make a backup of the registry before performing the above steps. Meanwhile, please make sure you have installed the latest Adobe update. Best Regards Magon Liu TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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July 29th, 2011 3:41am

Hi, As this thread has been quiet for a while, we assume that the issue has been resolved. At this time, we will mark it as ‘Answered’ as the previous steps should be helpful for many similar scenarios. If the issue still persists, please feel free to reply this post directly so we will be notified to follow it up. You can also choose to unmark the answer as you wish. BTW, we’d love to hear your feedback about the solution. By sharing your experience you can help other community members facing similar problems. Thanks for your understanding and efforts. Best Regards Magon Liu TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
August 2nd, 2011 4:16am

Since you are pushing the printer installation out by GPO, I believe you have mistakenly added the option to the GPO. This might not have been an issue in XP, but your Windows 7 machines are using the preference. http://blogs.technet.com/b/grouppolicy/archive/2009/06/24/gp-preferences-set-a-default-printer.aspx Try setting the computer to a test GPO and see if it is resolved. Dave
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August 2nd, 2011 2:33pm

This is not relevant for many reasons. 1) This issue is pretty narrow, it affects very few Windows 7 machines in our environment. If defaults were set by preference, a lot more people would have this issue. 2) This isn't how we map printers anyway. If you go into Print Management on the print server, right click the printer, then select deploy with group policy. There's no way to define a default printer when done this way.
August 4th, 2011 9:35am

I think the issue is related to group policy. Run GPResult /H GPReort.html from an elevated command prompt to obtain the RSOP for the user and computer and see if that gives you information to resolve this. for reference: http://www.404techsupport.com/2010/05/11/rsop-and-gpresult-must-know-tools-when-using-group-policy/ Dave
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August 4th, 2011 12:40pm

Hi, How is it going? Regards,Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
August 10th, 2011 12:33am

Hi, Thanks for posting in Microsoft TechNet forums. Please go to Devices and Printers, right click on your default printers and set it as default. If it does not work, please navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\Device, export this registry from another working administrators profile, and import it to the problematic machine. Please be noted that registry modification may endanger Windows functionality severely, please do make a backup of the registry before performing the above steps. Meanwhile, please make sure you have installed the latest Adobe update. Best Regards Magon Liu TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. ” This did not resolve the issue.
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August 15th, 2011 3:23pm

Typically, the default printer changes when using a Terminal Server because Great Plains loads before the printers are loaded. To resolve this issue, we: 1. Mapped the printer to the Terminal Server. 2. Set the mapped printer as the Default Printer. 3. When opening the Remote Desktop Connection we clicked ‘Options’ to check your settings 3a. We selected the ‘Local Resources Tab’ 3b. We unchecked Printers 4. We logged into the Terminal Server and found the correct printer was chosen as the default. 5. We closed GP and the Remote Desktop Connection. 6. We setup the Remote Desktop Connection to start GP upon login. 7. The correct printer was still selected as the Default Printer.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
August 17th, 2011 6:43am

Hello everyone following this thread, I have a suggestion, but unfortunatley, it is not a solution to the problem. This won't allow the enduser the ability to set the default printer according to their preference. (atleast, not easily .. they will need to be able to modify the script) It's a kludge. Run a dot bat file at login. Here is the single line of code: cscript c:\windows\system32\prnmngr.vbs -t -p \\printserver\printqueue This line of code is for XP. You will need to modify slightly for Win7. SookieSam
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August 18th, 2011 12:23am

I have this very similar problem to my network. I've tried pretty much everything found on google the last couple months but haven't got any luck. I know if I re-image the pc it would no longer reset the default printer but that would be giving up too easy. Does anyone get any luck?
October 11th, 2011 2:14pm

Remember Adobe PDF, CutePDF or XPS are considered local printers so they would show up on each profile; network printers are more volatile. This might be the Issue too.
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October 11th, 2011 7:06pm

I found this on another forum and test it on 5 workstations. 2 of them actually gave good result the other 3 remain resetting default printer every time. I hope someone will have better luck. Add this registry key: GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicy DWORD set value at 120 decimal for 120 seconds to this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ Since it's not gonna do any harm to the others, I'm gonna push it out globally to all workstations in our domain (about 400 pc) and see how many of them actually get fix (about 200 of them have this issue) If you have any idea, please let me know as this thing drives me nut the last few months. Thanks
October 19th, 2011 4:17pm

Woainot, You can set that via GPO: Setting Path: Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Group Policy/Startup policy processing wait time However, I think you'd be better off setting the following as well: Setting Path: Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Logon/Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon If the "Always wait" policy is applied, the machine will wait for the network to be fully initialized before logon occurs. However, even given both of these, I have a few users that have this issue (every reboot or logon/logoff thier default printer gets reset to some other random printer). I have found no sure-fire fix. If I look in the event log, i can see that it is the spooler service resetting their default printer, right after logon. Makes no sense.
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October 20th, 2011 11:44am

I have found a way that has fixed this issue for everyone who is experiencing it at my company. I had to go and edit the users registry hive: HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Connections I inevitably found old printer connections there that were no longer valid. Upon clearing those out, after a reboot, the problem went away. I also cleared out the HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Settings key - the users had old printer setting sin there also.
November 9th, 2011 10:12am

I have found a way that has fixed this issue for everyone who is experiencing it at my company. I had to go and edit the users registry hive: HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Connections I inevitably found old printer connections there that were no longer valid. Upon clearing those out, after a reboot, the problem went away. I also cleared out the HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Settings key - the users had old printer setting sin there also. Fantastic. Let me give this a try on a few users, hopefully this fixes it.
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November 9th, 2011 10:38am

Eureka! Thanks much - that's awesome - worked like a charm ...in my instance the legacy printer remnants were at only the HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Settings key Dale Unroe ...well actually that worked for that moment - later it was discovered that due to the way that VMware Fusion was default configured, the underlying Mac OS was pushing it's default printer up to the Windows 7 OS - disabled that 'feature' and everything now stays put
January 6th, 2012 1:03pm

I have found a way that has fixed this issue for everyone who is experiencing it at my company. I had to go and edit the users registry hive: HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Connections I inevitably found old printer connections there that were no longer valid. Upon clearing those out, after a reboot, the problem went away. I also cleared out the HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Settings key - the users had old printer setting sin there also. THANKS !!! This should be marked as the answer. Checked HKEY_USERS\USERS_SID_HERE\Printers\Connections, found and old driver and deleted the driver. Everything is fine after restart.
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January 19th, 2012 8:25pm

Thank you so much!!!
April 27th, 2012 10:43am

Do you have to remove the invalid printers from the local client's registry or from the Remote Desktop server's registry?
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June 13th, 2012 9:32am

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