Delete printers

[mawilson]

I have a user with an XP Pro machine and she has 4 network printers set up. When we try to delete the printers, it gives the error

Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed.

Then if I try it again it gives the error

Printer connection cannot be removed. Either the printer name was typed incorrectly, or the specified printer has lost its connection to the server.

Any ideas?

Mark

 

[Technochick]

do they have any jobs in the queue? sometimes it doesn't delete the printer if there is jobs in the queue.

if that doesn't work you can try to disable the print services options in computermanager then enable it after you've deleted the printer.

 

[mawilson]

There aren't any jobs in the queue.
The only thing I could find to disable was the spooler service, and then you can't do anything with a printer. I was able to go into the registry and delete the printers, but after I add one back, I can't delete it again.

Mark

 

[bcastner]

Things can get complicated due to permissions issues. Several thoughts:

. Start button, Run, lusrmgr.msc
Add the user under Groups, Power User and Network Configuration
Test.
. A very powerful but very easy way to remove the entries is to run the resource kit tool cleanspl.exe:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en

This exhaustively cleans the registry and other entries related to defined printers.

. Bruce Sanderson, MVP has a very good tutorial if you want to do this yourself by hand:

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

As he has noted several times, it is not completely clear what is bothering XP when it throws the error your received in your original post.

. Sometimes, sometimes, if you:

Start, Run, net stop spooler

Then you can do the removal of the defined printers without the error. Reboot when done.

 

[mawilson]

I was unable to do anything with any printers with the spooler service stopped. Permissions shouldn't be an issue because I have added the user to Administrators to troubleshoot the issue. I did use cleanspl, but it didn't correct the issue.
I have now discovered that it is happening on my machine also. Both machines are XP, one is SP1 with all updates, one is SP2.
What brought the issue to our attention is the fact that the other person doesn't have any printers available in Acrobat. It tells her she needs to add a printer, she goes through the add printer wizard, and then it again tells her she needs to add a printer, and so on and so on.

Mark