Problems Changing the Default Printer

If you have the following problems:

• Applications report that there is no default printer;

• Applications report that there are no printers installed;

• When installing a printer the system prompts “Default printer cannot be set”;

• When making a printer the default printer, nothing happens; or

• DEFPTR lists no printers.

This may be because to the Spooler service is not started, or is crashing due to a corrupt print job. See Cancelling Print Jobs Manually to clear and restart the Spooler.

It may also be caused by a missing registry key. See A user who is logged on to a Windows Server 2003-based Terminal Server cannot configure a printer as the default printer. This article is ostensibly about Terminal Services but the solution applies equally to all Windows systems.