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Cannot Set Default Printer in Vista

I recently came across an issue on a client PC where i could not set a printer to be the default.  When I right-clicked the printer and chose the “Set as Default Printer” option, absolutely nothing happened.  After researching the issue, I was able to manually make the printer the default by adding the following registry key:

Name: Device
Type: Reg_SZ (String Value)
Value: “printername, winspool, portname”
Location: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\

 In my case, the Windows key didnt exist under CurrentVersion and had to be created.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows XP Pro/Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Cannot Set Default Printer in Vista”

  1. Edu Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 4:58 am

    Tnx man, i was the same problem

  2. Chris Says:
    November 16th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    Thanks, great help. I had been struggling with this issue for awhile. Nice to be able to print PDFs after so long with flash drives and computer labs.

  3. Adrian Rutter Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Thanks that sorted me out a treat.
    Maybe an update recently caused the problem …!!!

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