Disable Printer Without Removing it (Win 7)

My problem our previous printer was moved to a different office, I accidentally printed to it and don't want to do it again. However there might be a time when I actually want to print to it in the future.

I want to keep the printer in question but I just want to disable it.

I do not want to remove them completely however.

Not sure if this is possible.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

You didn't state your OS but in Win 7 try Control Panel>>Devices and Printers and pick one that isn't the one you want disabled. Just right mouse on a printer there and you will get a menu of choices.

 

It says Win 7 in the title

And the right click doesn't have a 'disable' option....only remove which I don't want.

 

Whoops, sorry about the OS thing. I see it. Can you set another printer as default?

 

Well my default printer is a local MFP copier but most of my engineering programs default to the last printer used.

Which is why this morning when I was in a hurry I accidentally printed to the other office

It's no big deal I just have to pay attention, I'm just surprised there isn't a 'disable' printer function so you don't have to remove it but at the same time can't accidentally use it either.

 

This should do the trick.

Automatic Printer Switcher Changes Default Printer for Different Programs

Download and install the software. After that open up your engineering software, and then switch back to the Automatic Printer Switcher window, click refresh list, then select the process name of the engineering software program, choose change default printer, and then select your preferred printer.

 

You could probably just set another one (the one in your office now or OneNote or Adobe PDF) to default.

 

Thanks for the suggestions but I just don't think it is possible to do what I would like to do.

 

Are your printers networked or hard wired via USB cables? If hard wired, you can download the 64-bit edition of devcon for Windows and using some registry magic set up a right-click context command that disables/enables each printer with the devcon disable hardware_id; where hardware_id is the hardware id of your printer(s).

What you would need to do is first download the devcon utility below and place it in your Windows directory. Then open up command prompt and type in "devcon findall * > c:\results.txt" Once complete, navigate to your C: root and open up results.txt. Looking at the long list, locate your two printers. The long name you see to the left to the : is the hardware id for all your devices. What you will need to do from here is copy that hardware id, then open up another command prompt and type "devcon disable". Don't press enter and now right-click inside command prompt window and paste the hardware ID in. Test to see if the printer has been disabled by opening up notepad and seeing if you can locate the printer as a option in the select printer options of the "print" window.

If that works, success we have successfully created our scripts to disable each printer! To enable it all you simply do is change the command from devcon disable hardware_id to devcon enable hardware_id

Now what to do with these commands? We could map these 4 commands to the right-click context menu on the desktop to easily enable/disable the printer of our choice. To do that:

1. Open registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell
2. Right click on Shell and choose New -> Key
3. Rename the New Key as Enable Printer_1 <-- where Printer_1 is the name of your actual printer
4. Right click on Enable Printer_1, choose New ->Key
5. Rename this key Command
6. Click on command, then click on (default) in right panel
7. Change Value data to devcon disable hardware_id; where it matches the hardware id of the printer. Essentially this is our command to disable the printer
8. Repeat the same process for disabling printer_1, disabling printer_2, and enabling_printer 3.

Of course if your printer is networked I just wasted my time writing this tutorial to you, but it was still fun to write to intrigue/interest others who might be reading this as well. Hope this helps man.

Devcon 64-bit utility: http://static.miklos.ca/devcon.zip

 

Actually all the printers are networked and their are about six of them but this is a really cool tutorial and I'll make note of it because it could come in handy elsewhere.

Thanks and + rep when I can.