Can’t Remove Printer on Windows [Solved]

You just purchased a new printer and would like to replace the old one at home. You think you have removed the printer and its driver, but when you reboot your computer, you can still see the printer’s icon, the only difference is that the icon all grayed out. In this case, it becomes impossible for you to uninstall or remove it again. 

Luckily, this is an easy problem to solve. 

Follow the steps below to fix the problem by yourself. 

1) Click the Start button and type cmd.exe in the search box. Then right-click cmd and click Run as administrator. 

2) Type in the command print /s /t2 and hit Enter key on your keyboard. 

3) Then you will be lead to this page. Try remove your printer driver now by selecting it and click the Remove button. Please remember to press OK to save the change. 

4) Then go to Devices and Printers panel by following this path: Control Panel> Hardware and Sound> Devices and Printers.

Locate the printer that you would like to remove and right click it to choose Remove device. 

5) If the above steps don’t work, press the Windows key  and R at the same time to invoke a Run command. Type services.msc and press Enter. 



6) Locate PrinterSpooler service. Right-click it and select Properties. 

7) Then select Stop service. Click OK to exit. 




8) Follow the path 
My Computer\C:\Windows\System32\spool\Printers.

If prompted for permission to go to this folder, click Continue or Yes to continue the procedure.  

9) Press Ctrl + A to select all the information in this folder and right click to click Delete. 

10) Go to Services panel again to restart the PrinterSpooler service. 

Click Start. Then click OK to exit. 

You might want to reboot your computer at this point.

11) Repeat step 1) to step 4). This time it should work. 

12) If necessary, please go to Ports tab and see if you need to remove any TCP/IP ports that are associated with the old printer. 

That’s all you need to do!