Printing Issues

[PurpleTentacle]

I'm starting to see a rise in issues where various apps do not give the option to print to queues on a print server.

 

When looking at the Settings > Devices > Printer & Scanners page, the printers are showing as they have been added.

The network printers cannot be set as the default.

 

Edge (and the Office apps) only show the standard local/software printers.

 

Removing the network queue printers is fruitless.

 

Interestingly when I logged on to the computer as the local administrator, I found Windows had added the printers, an impressive feat as the local administrator shouldn't have access to the queues to be able to add them.

Again, using settings to remove the printers was fruitless.

 

I deleted the devices (printer queues) from Device Manager, but they were added back again almost instantly.

 

The only way I could get rid of them was to stop the spooler service, and then delete the relevant entries from the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print).

 

 

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour from Windows? Better still, does anyone know what Windows is playing at, and how to stop it?