MANUALLY REMOVE PRINTER DRIVERS

Here’s how to clean up the print spooler stuff if cleanspl.exe is not available or you prefer to do things manually.

Warning! be very careful using regedit – if you delete the wrong things, you may render your computer inoperative!

1. open regedit (e.g. click Start, key regedit and press Enter)
2. navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintEnvironmentsWindows NT 25x86Drivers

under this key, there will be the keys Version-2 and Version-3 (one or the other of these may be absent – not a problem)

the sub-keys under these contain the printer driver configuration information

delete all the sub-keys inside Version-2 and Version-3, but not these keys themselves

The Microsoft Knowledgebase article at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;312052 lists some other registry entries to delete, but this is not usually necessary.

3. open a Command Prompt window
4. key the commands
net stop spooler
net start spooler
5. open Windows Explorer
6. navigate to %systemroot%system32spoolprinters and delete any files there. By default, this is where the print spooler stores print files.
7. navigate to %systemroot%system32spooldriversw32x86 (%systemroot% is usually Windows, but it might be winnt or something else; this is set when the OS is installed).
8. inside w32x86, there will be folders with the names 2 and 3 (one or more of these may be absent – not a problem)
delete all of the files and sub-folders in each of the 2 and 3 folders, but not the folders themselves
inside w32x86, there may be other folders with names starting with “hewlett_packard”, “hphp” or something else; delete these folders also
9. restart the print spooler (see steps 8 and 9 above)