Cannot uninstall driver point and print shared driver on workstation or server.

Question

Our driver is installed on the server first and then shared among many workstations.

Driver My-Printdriver is installed first on a server mytestserver2016.
Then from a workstation, it is installed like so \mytestserver2016\My-Printdriver.
It installs fine.. but when I try to uninstall the driver either one (on the workstation or server),looks like there is a circular reference.
Error while deleting from Workstation
The following driver(s) can not be deleted:

Driver My-Printdriver (x64) is in use. It is used on:
\mytestserver2016\My-Printdriver.

Error while deleting from Server
Failed to remove driver My-Printdriver. The specified printer driver is currently in use.
Failed to remove package My-Printdriver.inf. Driver package is in use.

What should I do? Did I do something wrong when installing the driver first of all on the server?

Thank you

Answer 1

@Smitha Challa

When the driver is assigned to a printer, the the software can't be removed.

If you have removed the printer, it's gone from the User Interface, and you get the error menthioned, then the printer is either still instalked to another profile on the client, or you have a Zombie printer.

Don't be scared, they are easy to hack up to little bits.

What you will see in the registry is the printer name, or GUID name on a client system, with a comma and a number.

On the server, in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\My-Printdriver, 4

This is your Zombie.

Restart the Print Spooler service and the restart will clear out the Zombie.

You can use the PowerShell command restart-service if you need to do this programmatically