Thursday, 21 July 2016

Fix 0x00000057 error adding a network printer in Windows 10

Today one of our support staff approached me with a problem he could not find a solution to:
Our users have their printers assigned via group policies. This works well and the users don't need admin privileges to install the printer drivers.

Apparently a Kyocera printer disappeared from a user's machine and nothing he had tried brought back the printer. By the error message it was a connection problem, but he cound not find any connectivity issues.

I found a hint here, which didn't quite work for me, but set me on the right track.
For our scenario: Win2008R2-64bit print server / Win10 (x64) client, the procedure turned out to be as follows:


  • Run regedit
  • Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3
  • Find the entry that most likely corresponds to your missing printer
  • Klick that key
  • Find the InfPath entry and note the path. It will be something like: C:\windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\hpcu115u.inf_amd64_4a9d334b04ff58b2\
  • Navigate to that path with explorer
  • Take over ownership of that directory and all subfolders
  • Allow "full access" to the directory for yourself
  • Delete the directory
  • Remove the whole registry key of that printer (like: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3\HP Universal Printing PCL 6 (v5.3) )
  • Restart the local spool service
  • Add the print server's shared printer with the "add printer" dialog
That did it for me. The printer drivers were downladed from the print server, installed and now work without any issues.


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