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On Windows there are system default printer forms which can't be deleted from the Print Server Properties dialog. Is there some other way they can be removed? We are never going to use page sizes like Envelope, B5(JIS), US Std Fanfold, etc. and I'd like to save users (and myself!) from having to scroll through a big long list of noise.

Print server properties box has a unusable delete button

Our print servers are Windows Server 2003 if that makes any difference.

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Deleting the system forms may not be an option. Why not try and set a default form for each tray on the printer rather than having to scroll down everytime? – ServerFaulter Dec 10 '12 at 8:17
@ServerFaulter, I need the same forms for multiple printers (and they have only one tray for the most part; most are large format roll-feed plotters). – matt wilkie Dec 10 '12 at 20:40
2  
This is completely ghetto, but you could name your forms 000 MyForm - MyPageSize or similar. – voretaq7♦ Dec 10 '12 at 22:09
@voretaq7 I reckon that's the best option, actually. – Dan Dec 10 '12 at 22:13
2  
@Dan It avoids the problem, but it certainly doesn't solve it. You really SHOULD be able to delete unnecessary templates, but if MS is going to make that a chore screw it. – voretaq7♦ Dec 10 '12 at 22:18

2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote
+75

My first thought was to see if this could be accomplished by using the Windows API's, but according to this website about the Win32 Printer Forms API, it's not even possible to delete system forms programmatically:

One cannot DeleteForm() on a builtin form: it fails with ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER.

My second thought was to find a relatively unique form name, such as US Std Fanfold and search the whole registry. Surprisingly, the entry crops in quite a number of places. My suggestion, therefore, would be to build a blank 32 bit machine (32 bit to avoid confusion with shadow keys) and go to town on some of those keys. If you get it working it should be easy to transpose to wherever you need to do this.

However, it has to be said, that given how much Microsoft clearly don't want you to do this, you are opening yourself up to support and compatibility issues.

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The linked forms API page is exceptionally well written. Even though I'm not a developer it makes many things much clearer to me. Thanks. – matt wilkie Feb 6 at 19:11
up vote 0 down vote

On the print server itself the forms are located in the registry:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Forms

(NOTE: I've never deleted the forms myself out of here so I would make a backup of the key first before deleting and testing the results).

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I deleted the entries under that key and rebooted but they still show up in the list (Printers and Faxes > Server Properties > Forms). – matt wilkie Sep 16 '09 at 17:21
...also there many forms listed in the Server Properties dialog that don't show up under that registry key. – matt wilkie Dec 7 '12 at 18:04

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