Managing Printers and Drivers on Windows with PowerShell

With PowerShell, you can automate common printer and printer driver management tasks in Windows. This guide explains how to create, delete, or share a printer from the PowerShell console; set a default printer; map a network printer; install or remove printer drivers; and manage local ports and print queues.

The built-in PrintManagement PowerShell module includes 22 cmdlets for managing printers, drivers, print ports, and queues:
Get-Command –Module PrintManagement

• Add-Printer – add (install) a new printer;
• Add-PrinterDriver – install a new printer driver;
• Add-PrinterPort – create a local print port;
• Get-PrintConfiguration – display the printer configuration;
• Get-Printer – list the printers installed on a computer;
• Get-PrinterDriver – list the available printer drivers;
• Get-PrinterPort – show the printer ports;
• Get-PrinterProperty – show the printer properties;
• Get-PrintJob – list the print tasks in the queue;
• Read-PrinterNfcTag – get printer information from the NFC tag;
• Remove-Printer – remove the printer;
• Remove-PrinterDriver — remove the printer driver;
• Remove-PrinterPort – remove the printer port;
• Remove-PrintJob – delete a print job on the printer;
• Rename-Printer – rename the printer;
• Restart-PrintJob – restart the print job;
• Resume-PrintJob – resume the paused print job;
• Set-PrintConfiguration – set the printer configuration;
• Set-Printer – update the printer configuration;
• Set-PrinterProperty – change printer properties;
• Suspend-PrintJob – suspend (pause) the print job;
• Write-PrinterNfcTag – write information into the NFC tag.

Adding Printer Drivers to the DriverStore

The PrintManagement module has the Add-PrinterDriver cmdlet, which allows install a printer driver from an INF file. In fact, this cmdlet only allows adding drivers to an offline Windows image (just like the Add-WindowsDriver command, which lets you integrate drivers into offline Windows images).

To install a printer driver from an INF file, use the pnputil console command. Download the drivers for your printer model from the vendor’s website and extract them to a local folder. Then install the driver:

pnputil.exe -i -a "C:\drivers\KYOCERA\KyoClassicUniversalPCL6\OEMsetup.inf"

Once the driver has been installed in the Windows Driver Store, it must be added to the list of available drivers for the print server:

Add-PrinterDriver -Name "Kyocera Classic Universaldriver PCL6"

List available print drivers:

Get-PrinterDriver

How to Install Printer with PowerShell

Before creating a new printer, you must add a printer port. This can be a local port or it can be a network port (to send print jobs to a remote printer over the network). For example:
Add-PrinterPort -Name "LocalPort:" -ErrorAction -Verbose

Or specify the remote printer IP or print server name as the PrinterHostAddress.

Add-PrinterPort -Name "IP_192.168.10.26" -PrinterHostAddress "192.168.10.26"

To create a new printer in Windows, specify the printer name, driver, and port:

Add-Printer -Name "Ricoh IM 2702" -DriverName "Kyocera Classic Universaldriver PCL6" -PortName USB001 -Verbose

Check that the new printer appears in the Control Panel and Settings app.

To rename the printer:

Rename-Printer -Name "Ricoh IM 2702" -NewName "Ricoh_2702"

To share a new printer over the network:

Set-Printer -Name "Ricoh IM 2702" -Shared $True -ShareName "Ricoh_2702"

Disable printer sharing:

Set-Printer -Name "Ricoh IM 2702" -Shared $False

List Printers on a Print Server Using PowerShell

List the printers installed on a computer:

Get-Printer

The command returns the printer names, types (local or network), driver, print port, whether the printer is shared, and whether it is published in Active Directory.

Most of the cmdlets in the PrintManagement module can be used to manage printers on remote computers (by using the -ComputerName parameter).

View a list of printers installed on a remote computer (print server):

Get-Printer -ComputerName rome-prnt1 | Format-List Name,DriverName

List shared printers on a computer:

Get-Printer -ComputerName rome-prnt1 | where Shared -eq $true | fl Name

Get printers that have duplex printing support:

Get-Printer | ForEach-Object { Get-PrintConfiguration -PrinterName $_.Name } | Where-Object { $_.DuplexingMode -ne "OneSided" }

List all the color printers on a computer:

Get-Printer | ForEach-Object { Get-PrintConfiguration -PrinterName $_.Name } | where {$_.Color -eq $True}

Enable color printing mode for a printer:

Get-Printer 'HP Color LaserJet 150nw' | Set-PrintConfiguration -Color $true

Connect a Network Shared Printer with PowerShell

To connect a shared printer from a print server to a computer:

Add-Printer -ConnectionName \\rome-prnt1\HP3027

List the network printers connected to a computer:

Get-Printer | ?{$_.type -eq 'Connection'}

Remove a specific network printer connection:

Get-Printer -name \\rome-prnt1\HP3027| Remove-Printer -force

Remove all mapped network printers from your computer:

Get-Printer | ?{$_.type -eq 'Connection'} | Remove-Printer

Set a Default Printer on Windows

Windows automatically sets the default printer to the last printer that the user successfully printed to. To prevent Windows from reassigning the default printer, create the LegacyDefaultPrinterMode registry parameter:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows" -Name "LegacyDefaultPrinterMode" -Value 1 –Force

Then use the following commands to set the fixed default printer:

$Printer = Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_Printer -Filter "Name='Ricoh IM 2702'"
Invoke-CimMethod -InputObject $Printer -MethodName SetDefaultPrinter

How to Remove Printer with PowerShell

To remove a printer, use the command:

Remove-Printer -Name "HP LaserJet M1530"

You can then remove the printer driver from the print server:

Remove-PrinterDriver -Name "HP Universal Printing PCL 6"

Here are some other useful commands for sysadmin to manage typical printing tasks.

Send a test page for printing:

Invoke-CimMethod -MethodName printtestpage -InputObject (Get-CimInstance win32_printer | Where-Object Name -eq "HP LaserJet M1530")

Clear the printer queue:

Get-Printer -Name "HP LaserJet M1530" | Get-PrintJob | Remove-PrintJob