A common troubleshooting step in resolving printer issues is to uninstall and reinstall the printer driver. However, sometimes the issue persists, and the solution is to uninstall both the driver and the driver package.
- Open cmd
- Run the command: printui /s /t2
- Select the printer that is having the issue and click “Remove”
- Select “Remove driver and driver package” and click “OK”
- If a warning appears, click “Yes”
In some cases, you’ll get a warning that states “The following package(s) can not be deleted” because they are in use. This may happen even if you’ve uninstalled the printer and are trying to remove just the printer driver package. If this happens to you, follow the process below:
- Follow the process to get to the warning message, DO NOT CLICK YES YET!
- Open cmd as admin
- Run the command: net stop spooler
- Enter the command: net start spooler DO NOT CLICK ENTER YET!
At this point you should have a stopped print spooler, a warning message waiting to click “Yes”, and a command waiting to hit “Enter”.
Move the warning message to the side of your screen, click on the command prompt window to bring it in focus, then hover your mouse cursor over the warning message “Yes”.
You will hit ENTER first, then immediately click “Yes”. You must be very very quick, almost simultaneous. Without the print spooler running, you can’t remove the driver and driver packages. With the print spooler running, it won’t delete the driver package because its in use. But if the print spooler has only been running for 1/10th of a second, you can successfully delete the driver and driver package!