Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

Fix for Cannot Remove or Delete Network Printer in Windows

Posted: 26 Aug 2015 12:20 PM PDT

If you work at an office, you probably have several printers added to your computer that are network printers, i.e. not connected directly to your computer. However, as you move around in the company or printers die out, that list has to be cleaned up every once in a while.

Sometimes when you try to delete a network printer, you may get a message from Windows saying "Cannot delete network printer" and that's it! Great, so now you have useless printers clogging up your printer list. Luckily, there is a way to remove any network printer from your computer via the registry. Note that you will have to be an Administrator in order to do this.

Before you make any changes, make sure to read my post on backing up the Windows Registry. If you prefer not to mess with the registry, there is another possible solution that I list below that could also fix the problem, so be sure to scroll down.

Remove Network Printers from Windows via Registry Editor

Step 1: Click on Start, Run and then type in regedit and press Enter. This will open the registry editor.

Step 2: Navigate to the following key in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Printers – Connections

Here you should now see a list of all network printers with the server name first, then a comma, and then the name of the actual printer.

Go ahead and click on the printer in the left menu and press the Delete button or right-click and choose Delete. Unfortunately, that's not all! You also have to delete the printer from one more location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Control – Print – Providers – LanMan Print Services – Servers – Printers

Now under the servers key, you should be able to expand it and see the name of the print server that actually hosts the printer you want to delete. Go ahead and expand the print server key and delete the printer from the list.

Now close the registry editor and reboot your computer. The undeletable network printer should now be gone! Note that the method above is just for network printers. If you have a local printer and want to remove it the same way via the registry, you need to go to the following registry keys below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\ Windows NT x86\ Drivers\Version-3\

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\

Clear Printer Queue

It is also a known issue that you will not be able to delete a printer if there is a print job stuck in the printer queue. You can tell if a print job is stuck by going to the C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS\ folder and making sure it’s empty.

If not, then you can follow my previous article on forcefully clearing the printer queue in Windows. Once you clear the printer queue, you should be able to delete the printer from your system.

If you need to install the printer back onto your computer, check out my post on how to install a network printer on your home or office network. Enjoy!

The post Fix for Cannot Remove or Delete Network Printer in Windows appeared first on Online Tech Tips.

Generate a List of Startup Programs via Command Line or PowerShell

Posted: 26 Aug 2015 11:42 AM PDT

You probably already knew this, but if you want to see a list of all of the startup programs that run when Windows starts, you can simply go to the MSCONFIG tool and click on the Startup tab! Here you can enable or disable startup programs easily. You can read my previous article that explains how to use MSCONFIG in detail.

It’s worth noting that in Windows 8 and Windows 10, the Startup tab has been removed from MSCONFIG and is now included in the Task Manager. You can get to the Task Manager by simply right-clicking on the Start button in Windows 8 or Windows 10 and choosing Task Manager from the list.

Knowing which programs run at startup can be very useful for debugging all sorts of performance issues related to your PC. One recommendation I always give is to make a list of all of the startup programs enabled while your computer is running normally. That way, if your computer is running slow later on, you can always go back to MSCONFIG and uncheck anything that wasn’t originally listed.

Also, there are times when technical support may request a list of startup programs in order to diagnose an issue with your computer. Generating a list and emailing them could save you a lot of time and prevent someone from having to connect remotely to your computer, which I never prefer since I don’t trust anyone else having access to my computer.

In addition to the task manager looking a bit nicer and cleaner in Windows 8 and Windows 10, it also forgoes the checkboxes and gives you a column called Startup Impact to help you gauge how that startup item affects the boot time.

You can actually generate a list of all the startup programs in Windows using the command prompt or PowerShell and save the list as a text file or an HTML document. Follow the steps below.

Command Prompt

Step 1: Open the command prompt by going to Start, Run and typing in CMD. If you are unfamiliar with the command prompt, feel free to read my command prompt beginner’s guide first.

Step 2: Now type in the following WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) command at the prompt and press Enter.

wmic startup get caption,command

You should now see a list of all the applications along with their paths that run at Windows startup.

If you want more information, you can also just type wmic startup and you’ll get a few extra fields like Location, UserSID and User.

Step 3: If you want to export the list out as a text file, type in the following command:

wmic startup get caption,command > c:\StartupApps.txt

And if you want to create an HTML file, just type this instead:

wmic startup get caption,command > c:\StartupApps.htm

PowerShell

If you prefer to use the more modern and powerful PowerShell, the command below will give you pretty much the same results as the WMI command above.

Get-CimInstance Win32_StartupCommand | Select-Object Name, command, Location, User | Format-List

If you want to send the output of a PowerShell command to a text file, you can simply append the following part to the above command after Format-List.

| Out-File c:\scripts\test.txt

Make sure to include the pipe symbol | that is at the very front. I actually prefer the output of PowerShell because the formatting is much easier to view in a text editor.

That's about it. You should now have a list of startup programs that you can save and reference later. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post Generate a List of Startup Programs via Command Line or PowerShell appeared first on Online Tech Tips.