How to use Group Policy to restore missing second printer in Windows 7

Aamer Shedam from Microsoft’s Ask the Performance Team has just blogged about how Windows 7 will only show one printer in “Devices and Printers” if you have that same two printers installed on the one computer (see below).

win7_duplicate_printer

If your an IT Administrator and you want to configured the “Printer” view in Windows Explorer to show an icon for each printer using Group Policy then take a look at my instructions below.

Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{2227a280-3aea-1069-a2de-08002b30309d}
Value: (Default)
Data: Printers

Step 1. Edit a Group Policy Object that is applied to all the workstation you want this Browser Ballot disabled.

Step 2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry and create a “New Registry Item”

Step 3. Type “SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{2227a280-3aea-1069-a2de-08002b30309d}” in the Key Path tick “Default”, then select REG_DWORD as the value type “Printers” in the value data and then click “OK”.

image 

Now all your computers will display this view in Windows Explorer.

Win7_PrinterView 

Links:

Author: Alan Burchill

Microsoft MVP (Group Policy)

5 thoughts on “How to use Group Policy to restore missing second printer in Windows 7

  1. Note that if pushing this out via Group Policy on a mixed domain of XP and Windows 7 PCs that enabling this key will place a Printers Icon on XP users’ desktops that they can’t remove.

    (That is of course if you fail to create individual policies for each OS)

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