Microsoft enhanced point and print keeps replacing my printer driver

Question

Hi,
I have a printer connected via USB to PC1 and it is shared.

PC2 uses it by installing the printer via local port witch is the PC1 share name and prints everything I need.

However Microsoft enhanced point and print driver keeps replacing this setup and installs another shared printer instead.

When this happens all the second PC prints is gibberish.

How can I stop it from replacing my printer setup?

Both PCs have Windows 10 Pro and Printer is Epson ET-2600

Answer 1

@Pedro Moita , something is happening on the client machine which is triggering some PnP action which is reinstalling the queue and plopping down the MS driver.

If the printer is shares from a different machine, I would do the trick that has been working for over 25 years.

On the client system, create a local printer using a Local Port in the format \servername\sharename. Set this up with the vendor driver.

This should be redirected in the TS session so the files from teh Remote Desktop Server is copied back to the client system and then on to the machine sharing the printer.

In this configuration Windows should not be making a determination to replace the driver.

You can check the C:\windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log on the client systems to determine why Windows might be changing the driver for the connection to the share.

Thanks

Answer 2

Forgot to say about 90% of what both pcs print is from RDP session.

Answer 3

When the driver on the server is a Type 4 driver, unless the vendor has the same driver name on Windows Update, the expected driver is going to be the Microsoft enhanced point and print driver.

Since you use remote desktop, have you installed a vendor driver on all the clients? I'd also configure remote desktop to use the vendor driver rather than the Easy print driver the terminal services team developed back in the day.

Answer 4

I do have the vendor driver installed in both clients and the server, and it prints just fine like that.

My problem is when one of the clients starts to use the Enhanced Point and Print instead of the vendor driver, all it prints either local or remote when this happens is gibberish.

I need to prevent the Enhanced Point and Print from replacing the vendor driver, and still haven't figured how.