Fix for Cannot Remove or Delete Network Printer

If you work at an office, you probably have several printers added to your computer that are network printers, i.e. no connected directly to your computer. However, as you move around in the company or printers die out, that list has to be clean up every once in a while.

Sometimes when you try to delete a network printer, you may get a message saying “Cannot delete network printer” from Windows and that’s it! Great, so now you have useless printers clogging up your printer list. Luckily, there is a way to remove any network printer from your computer via the registry. Note that you will have to be an Administrator in order to do this.

Before you make any changes, make sure to read my post on backing up the Windows Registry.

Remove network printers from Windows using registry

Step 1: Click on Start, Run and then type in regedit and press Enter. This will open the registry editor.

Step 2: Navigate to the following key in the registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Printers – Connections

Here you should now see a list of all network printers with the server name first, then a comma, and then the name of the actual printer.

Go ahead and click on the printer in the left menu and press the Delete button or right-click and choose Delete. But that’s not all! You have to delete the printer from one more location in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SYSTEM – CurrentControlSet – Control – Print – Providers – LanMan Print Services – Servers – Printers

Now under the Printers key, you should be able to expand it and see the name of the print server that actually hosts the printer you want to delete. Go ahead and expand the print server key and delete the printer from the list.

Now close the registry editor and reboot your computer. The undeletable network printer should now be gone!