Point and Print is a term that refers to the ability to allow a user on a Windows client computer to create a connection to a remote printer without providing disks or other installation media. All necessary configuration files and information are automatically downloaded from the print server to the client. In this article, we will identify the potential cause of why the driver change is causing Point and Print fail in Windows 10, as well as provide the workaround to help alleviate this problem.
Point and Print technology offers two methods for specifying the files to send from the print server to the client device:
- The files can be associated with a printer driver. These files are associated with each print queue that uses the driver.
- Files can be associated with individual print queues.
Driver change causes Point and Print to fail
The printer server does not have the correct printer driver installed
The following error is displayed if the printer drivers fail when trying to print from a client to a shared network printer hosted on a Windows print server.
The server for the
the printer does not have the correct printer driver installed. If you want to find the correct driver, click OK. Otherwise, click Cancel and contact your network administrator or the manufacturer of the original equipment to obtain the appropriate printer driver.
This printer driver fails. A problem may occur if a print queue has been switched from one driver to another, leaving an invalid CopyFiles key in the registry location below.
HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPrintPrintersCopyFiles
It is recommended not to switch print queues from one driver to another without first checking that the drivers are compatible and to support this operation, as follows:
- Use the Add a printer Device and Services wizard to configure new print queues on a Windows server. It might automatically select an initial driver for you that may not be compatible with the driver you want to switch it to.
- Change a printer driver via Printer properties > Advanced > Driver. In this case, if an incompatible driver is selected, you may experience unexpected results.
However, to work around this printer driver failure problem, use one of the following methods:
- Save and delete the invalid CopyFiles registry key.
- Use the network printer installation wizard from the print management console (printmanagement.msc) to add print queues to a Windows server.
- Use a script to install printers, such as those provided in the % SystemRoot% System32 Printing_Admin_Scripts folder, and then specify the correct printer driver to use when creating the queue.
I hope this helps you!
