Default Printer Changes

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Guest

Every time my wife sends a print job from her PC to the printer attached to
my PC, my default printer changes. This is extremely anoying. I am
constantly having to reset my default printer or accidentilly printing on the
wrong printer. How can this behaviour be changed?

The printer in question is a Brother HL-5150D Laser Printer attached via
USB, in case that makes a difference. Both systems have Windows XP
Professional.
 
Another PC printing via your network to a printer attached to your PC should
not change anything. The only time your PC may 'lose' its default printer
is if it is not available, in which case it will look for and find another
printer and when it does so, it will make the new one the default.
 
Cari: Thanks for the response. How can that behaviour be turned off? I
suspect that one of the Brother printer driver components (BRSS01A.EXE OR
BRSVC01A.EXE) or some other process is "polling" the printer and causing the
switch when it finds the printer active. So I want Windows to never change
the default unless I specifically request the change.
--
Hal
in Austin, TX


Cari (MS-MVP) said:
Another PC printing via your network to a printer attached to your PC should
not change anything. The only time your PC may 'lose' its default printer
is if it is not available, in which case it will look for and find another
printer and when it does so, it will make the new one the default.
Click to expand...
 
Are talking about the default printer according to the Printers Folder
rather than according to any particular application?

This one should only change if you explicitly change it or if you explicitly
delete the default printer (in which case there is a message telling you
what is happening). Normally, this is done usin the Printers Folder. I don't
know of any other condition where a printer is "lost" and causes this.

Certainly, it is possible that third party software is changing the default
printer. This would be unusual and not recommended. Does it change the
default printer back to the Brother as soon as you change it to something
else (you can Refresh in the Printers Folder to see the most up to date
status).

You could try eliminating as much third party software as possible. You
could try looking at the list of Processes in Task Manager. Are any of them
suspicious? You could try running msconfig and see what processes start when
Windows does.

If it is a third party component loaded by the print spooler, you will not
see it in Task Manager, as it will be a DLL loaded by SPOOLSV.EXE. This
could be a printer driver (which you don't have much choice over). There
could be port or language monitor that you could do without. There could be
a print provider (unlikely). Windows Print Migrator will allow you to export
all the third pary components and configuration if you need someone else to
look at this.

You could research this on Brother's web site and ensure that you a minimal
installation of the most recent software.

I realise there are a lot of things to think about here, and I may need to
go into more detail about some of them, which I will be happy to do.
Paul

HalJ78727 said:
Cari: Thanks for the response. How can that behaviour be turned off? I
suspect that one of the Brother printer driver components (BRSS01A.EXE OR
BRSVC01A.EXE) or some other process is "polling" the printer and causing
the
switch when it finds the printer active. So I want Windows to never change
the default unless I specifically request the change.
Click to expand...
 
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