Other Users Printers Populate In Print Dialog

Problem

Under certain situations, a user may see other user’s ScrewDrivers printers in a print dialog. Permissions on the printers prevent a different user from accessing or printing to that printer, but the additional printers may cause confusion to the user.

One situation that causes this behavior is when a user has a print dialog open and another user logs into the system. When the printer is added, a broadcast message is sent from the system that the printer is added and, despite not have permission for that printer, it is displayed in the print dialog. The dialog only displays printers when it receives this broadcast, any other time, such as after a refresh, Microsoft Windows will only display the printers available to the correct user.  The users Devices & Printers window may be affected in the same way as the print dialog.

Previous cases have been opened with Microsoft to investigate this issue which have resulted in confirmation of the issue without resolution.

Solution

Tricerat was able to implement a setting that can be used in conjunction with the AddPrinter() API function that will limit the broadcast message from Windows. Additionally, registry settings are applied when printers are created to ensure compatibility with a variety of applications. With this setting in place, the behavior described above does not occur from printers created while a user is viewing the printing dialog.

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