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How to Remove Redirected Network Printers from your Computer

email printing

You may have come across situations where you see multiple Printers in your Devices and Printers Dialogue box, usually with a name “(redirected 2)” followed by your printer name. For example, if your printer name is “Canon Color Printer”, the redirected printer will have a name as follows: “Canon Color Printer (redirected 2)”. You just can’t use this printer or remove this. It gets messy here. After spending few minutes, I found out a way to remove such redirected printers from the Computer. Here is how you can do that.

Removing a Redirected Printer from your Computer

removing redirected printer

Note: You may require administrative rights to perform the following actions.

Step 1:

Go to Control Panel | Select “Administrative Tools” (If your Control Panel view is by Category, click on “View by” and select “Small icons” to see Administrative Tools. Then look for “Services”. Alternatively, you can just type “Services” in Search window in Start in your Windows 7.

Step 2:

Scroll down and look for “Print Spoolers” | Right click on it and click “Stop”

removing redirected printer

Step 3:

Type “regedit.exe” in Search window in Start on your Windows 7. On Windows XP, click Start | Run | type “regedit.exe” without quotes.

Step 4:

Look for the following registry key. NOTE: Editing your registry keys can cause serious damages to your computer. Do with extra care.

Key to look for: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers

Delete all the redirected printer names appear here.

removing redirected printer

Step 5:

Restart your computer.

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