Win 10 default printer keeps changing

[danoedel97]

Hi everyone!

I work in a larger enterprise IT environment. We have Win 10 pro on almost all machines.

It keeps changing the default printer on many of the users. For me, it always changes it to this architectural plotter on our network. For my boss, it always defaults to AdobePDF.

We have turned off the 'Let windows manage my default printer' in the windows setting. Matter of fact, we have disabled that for all users, through a registry edit GPO.

The registry entry we changed is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\LegacyDefaultPrinterMode

 

Any other ideas on what could be causing this? I have been looking into it for a while now, and seem to have exhausted the Internets knowledge.

Thanks in advance!

[DrMacintosh]

I think I found your problem

 

4 minutes ago, danoedel97 said:

Win 10 pro

Have a nice day 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

9 minutes ago, danoedel97 said:

The registry entry we changed is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\LegacyDefaultPrinterMode

Well I might not be IT but I can look at this logically. 

 

If you entered a registry edit to change the behavior of systems, but the systems ignore that behavior, then something must be wrong with the registry edit. Right? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

22 minutes ago, danoedel97 said:

Hi everyone!

I work in a larger enterprise IT environment. We have Win 10 pro on almost all machines.

It keeps changing the default printer on many of the users. For me, it always changes it to this architectural plotter on our network. For my boss, it always defaults to AdobePDF.

We have turned off the 'Let windows manage my default printer' in the windows setting. Matter of fact, we have disabled that for all users, through a registry edit GPO.

The registry entry we changed is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\LegacyDefaultPrinterMode

 

Any other ideas on what could be causing this? I have been looking into it for a while now, and seem to have exhausted the Internets knowledge.

Thanks in advance!

I don't think this is it, but there's supposedly an option called "Default printer is last printer used" (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/default-printer-keeps-changing-windows) It may also think if a printer is offline, it's not really there so it picks another one (I dunno, in someone's mind I'm sure that makes sense) and sticks to it.

 

I just went the nuclear approach one time and uninstalled all the printers I wasn't using.

[danoedel97]

21 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I don't think this is it, but there's supposedly an option called "Default printer is last printer used" (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/default-printer-keeps-changing-windows) It may also think if a printer is offline, it's not really there so it picks another one (I dunno, in someone's mind I'm sure that makes sense) and sticks to it.

Thats the reg edit we already did. And it does infact work. We can confirm this, since all machines will have the registry option changed.

 

22 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I just went the nuclear approach one time and uninstalled all the printers I wasn't using.

Unfortunately that won't be an option, as this is an office environment with ~200 users, and God-knows-how-many printers that they switch between. Like if one of the finance ladies wants to print to xerox-in-finance-1 all the time, but once a week she needs xerox-in-finance-2, we can't uninstall it.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, danoedel97 said:

Thats the reg edit we already did. And it does infact work. We can confirm this, since all machines will have the registry option changed.

It mentioned something in the Settings app however that will change the default printer to the last one used.

 

I mean, does it just change automagically with no user input? I think you should go figure out if there's any actions the users are doing that causes the default printer to change and repeat them on their computer.

[danoedel97]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It mentioned something in the Settings app however that will change the default printer to the last one used.

 

I mean, does it just change automagically with no user input? I think you should go figure out if there's any actions the users are doing that causes the default printer to change and repeat them on their computer.

The users aren't doing anything. We replicated the issue on a test-bench, that did nothing but sit on a desk.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, danoedel97 said:

The users aren't doing anything. We replicated the issue on a test-bench, that did nothing but sit on a desk.

So you powered the computer on, set a default printer, and some time later it set itself to something else?

[danoedel97]

19 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

So you powered the computer on, set a default printer, and some time later it set itself to something else?

Pretty much. It was a clean win 10 install.

Turned it on. 

Set default printer to xerox #1

Printed a couple of test pages

Came back a few days later and it was defaulted to xerox #2