prnRename: an AutoIt based utility to rename IPP printers in Windows

Using CUPS in conjunction with Windows is pretty easy to do, except there is one big major annoyance: you can’t rename the printer to something “friendly”, its always something long and annoying with the URL of the printer in it.

So, I jumped into the registry and figured out how to change it, and developed a tool using AutoIt (which works really well for these types of simple things) that allows you to change the URL and the name displayed for the printer in Windows Explorer.

See, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers lies registry keys for all of the printers you have there, and you’ll notice that the key for the IPP printer starts with two ,, and the URL. So, you just need to rename that to whatever you want, then change the following keys/values under that key to the same thing (this is AutoIt code, but I think you get the point).

RegWrite($key,"Name","REG_SZ",$newPrinterName)
RegWrite($key & "\DsSpooler","printerName","REG_SZ",$newPrinterName)
RegWrite($key & "\DsSpooler","uNCName","REG_SZ", "\\" & @ComputerName & "\\\" & $newPrinterName)

After making the changes, restart the spooler service

net stop spooler
net start spooler

And, thats pretty much all there is to it. Obviously, use this at your own risk, seeing as this is modifying undocumented registry entries. Source code is included.

Download Windows 2000/XP IPP Printer Rename Utility 

2 Responses to “prnRename: an AutoIt based utility to rename IPP printers in Windows”

  1. Alex says:

    Hi,

    the script is not working with Windows 2008 R2. It renames the printer but the printer can’t be used after the renaming. It looks like there is a rights access issue after renaming the printers display name as just two tabs are left thereafter and I don’t have rights to print on the user then.

    May I kindly ask you to investigate into this? Would be perfect!

    Alex

  2. dustin says:

    Hey Alex, I haven’t used this script in over 5 years at this point, and currently don’t have access to any computers running Windows 2008 R2. If you figure out a solution, let me know and I’ll post it for others who run into the same problem.

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