Catch 22 Uninstalling Printer Drivers

[TheTwysted1]

I am trying to troubleshoot a printer error, which requires me to uninstall and then reinstall the drivers as one of the steps. The problem I am running into is that when I try to uninstall the driver I am told that the driver is in use.

I stop the print spool service and try again, however I get a generic error code.

I can't uninstall the driver with the print spooler service running because it says it's using it, I also can't uninstall it without the print spooler running....

Catch 22?

The command prompt command I am using is the following (Running as Admin)

cscript prndrvr.vbs -d -m "Xerox ColorQube 9303 PS,3,Windows x64" -v 3 -e "Windows x64"

The error code is the following:

Unable to delete printer driver Xerox ColorQube 9303 PS,3,Windows x64 Error 0x80041001 Generic failure
Operation DeleteInstance
Provider Win32 Provider
Description The specified printer driver is currently in use.
Win32 error code 3001

Any help would be appreciated.

Steps Recorded
http://www.filehosting.org/file/details/425211/Problem_20130311_1042.mht

 

[casper1973]

Easiest method will probably be to boot into safe mode and uninstall from there.

How to get into safe mode in Windows 8 - http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/how-to-boot-into-safe-mode-on-windows-8-the-easy-way/

 

[TheTwysted1]

Easiest method will probably be to boot into safe mode and uninstall from there.

How to get into safe mode in Windows 8 - http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/how-to-boot-into-safe-mode-on-windows-8-the-easy-way/

I have already tried this, It tells me that the RPC service in unavailable and eventually I have to end up restarting the print spooler service which gets us back to square one, just in safe mode.

 

[casper1973]

Is the RPC service running? Because this is a dependency of the Print Spooler (ie. the Print Spooler will not work without it).

 

[TheTwysted1]

Is the RPC service running? Because this is a dependency of the Print Spooler (ie. the Print Spooler will not work without it).

In safe mode, I manually had to start the RPC service to start the print spooler which gets me back to square one. I still can't uninstall the driver because the print spooler is 'using it' and I can't uninstall it without the print spooler service running.

 

[casper1973]

Can you try stopping the Print Spooler then navigate to this folder and delete anything in there.

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Restart the Print Spooler and try again.

 

[TheTwysted1]

Can you try stopping the Print Spooler then navigate to this folder and delete anything in there.

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Restart the Print Spooler and try again.

Stopped the spooler, looked in that folder. Nothing is in there.
Restarted the service and still will not let me uninstall the drivers.

 

[TheTwysted1]

I solved my problem, this is how.

I. If there are problems to remove drivers using above steps, then try the following steps to remove the drivers manually.
1. Uninstall all printers that use the drivers
2. Stop printer spooler service
a. Type following command in command prompt
net stop spooler
b. Or, open services manager and find printer spooler, then click stop bottom to stop the service.
3. Open registry editor by type regedit in the run popup window.
4. Go to
For x86
\\hklm\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3\<Driver name>
Note:
Version 0 is Windows NT 3.1
Version 1 is Windows NT 3.5
Version 2 is Windows NT 4.0
Version 3 is Windows 2000
For x64
\\hklm\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3\<Driver name>
5. Find the drivers and delete the keys
6. Delete all files in %windir%\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 and/or , \1, \2
7. For some printer drivers, like HP’s, they have extra folders. Find the folders and delete them. For HP’s, they start with hphp and/or Hewlett_Packard.
8. Delete the .inf files that link to the removed drivers %windir%\inf\
9. Restart the print spooler.

 

[casper1973]

Good Job

Taking a copy of that for my notes haha