Manually Remove Printer Drivers
Date Added: 4/20/2016

https://www.techidiots.net/notes/windows-7/manually-remove-all-printer-drivers

Method 1 (Try First) - Force reinstall of a single corrupt driver
Find your driver name. (ex.“HP LaserJet 4050 Series PCL6”)
Remove all printers using the driver from step 1
Open Regedit. Remove the folder that matches the printer driver name under the following folder.
(on 32 bit(x86) computers) 
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3”
(on 64 bit(x64) computers) 
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3”
Restart the print spooler service
Reinstall the printers you removed. Windows should download the correct version of the driver and the printer should now work



Method 2 (Last Resort) - Remove All printer drivers
Reboot into safemode (you will need the bitlocker key if the machine is encrypted). Log in as Administrator
Remove the contents of the following folder
(on 32 bit(x86) computers) 
“C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\W32X86”
(on 64 bit(x64) computers) 
“C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64”
Open regedit. Remove all the folders under
(on 32 bit(x86) computers) 
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3”
(on 64 bit(x64) computers) 
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3”
Reboot into normal mode and log in as the user.
Verify All printers

---

Back to List