Removing a Printer

You might want to remove a printer setup for several reasons:

• The physical printer has been removed from service.
• You don't want to use a particular network printer anymore.
• You had several definitions of a physical printer using different default settings, and you want to remove one of them.
• You have a nonfunctioning or improperly functioning printer setup and want to remove it and start over by running the Add Printer Wizard.

In any of these cases, the approach is the same:

1. Be sure you are logged on with Administrator privileges.
2. Open the Devices and Printers window.
3. Be sure nothing is in the printer's queue. You have to cancel all jobs in the printer's queue before deleting the printer. If you don't, Windows will try to delete all jobs in the queue for you, but it unfortunately isn't always successful.
4. Right-click the printer icon you want to kill, and choose Remove Device.
5. Windows will ask you to confirm that you want to delete the printer. Click Yes. The printer icon or window disappears from the Devices and Printers window.

Tip The removal process removes only the printer icon in the Devices and Printers window. The related driver files and font files are not deleted from your hard disk. Therefore, if you ever want to re-create the printer, you don't have to insert disks or respond to prompts for the location of driver files. On the other hand, if you are having problems with the driver, deleting the icon and then reinstalling the printer won't delete the bad driver. Use the New Driver tool on the Advanced tab of the Properties dialog box to solve the problem in this case.