How to manually uninstall a printer driver in Windows

Autodesk Support

Nov 11, 2024

Products and versions covered

Issue:

How to manually remove a printer driver in the Windows operating system. After uninstalling or deleting a printer, the driver for it is not fully uninstalled.

Solution:

To prepare for removing printer driver

  1. Look in Programs and Features and uninstall any program that correlates to the printer driver to be removed.
  2. Open Devices and Printers and if still present, remove the printer driver by right-clicking it and choosing "Remove device."

Note : Not doing these before attempting to remove the driver files may result in an "access denied" or "printer in use" error.

To completely remove printer driver

  1. Open the Print Server Properties dialog window by doing one of the following:
    • Click the Start menu and in the search field type printui /s /t2 and then press Enter or click it in the search list.
    • Press WINDOWS-R on the keyboard to bring up the Run window, type in printui /s /t2 and then press Enter or click OK.
    • Press the WINDOWS key on the keyboard to display the Start screen, type in printui /s /t2 and then click it in the search list.
    • From the Start menu or the Start screen:
      1. Open Devices and Printers.
      2. Select any printer and then click "Print server properties" at the top of the window.
      3. Click on the Drivers tab.
  2. Select the printer driver to uninstall.
  3. Click the Remove button.
  4. Select "Remove driver and driver package" and click OK.

Note: Removing the driver package will clear all driver installation files for that device, leaving no reference to the printer that Windows could possibly use to auto-reinstall again.

If a message appears about access denied or the printer being in use and the driver or any installed program is not found that would account for this, restart the computer. If the driver still will not remove, restart the computer in a diagnostic startup and then use the printui /s /t2 command to remove the driver package(s). See Use Windows diagnostic mode to troubleshoot issues with Autodesk software. Restart back to normal mode before installing the printer again.

Products:

All Desktop Products;

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