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How to Prevent Users from Installing Shared Printer Drivers on Windows 7?

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Windows-7

In medium to large scale industries where there are several printers shared on the network Windows 7 users are by default allowed to download and install drivers of those printers without any administrative privileges. This feature makes administrators’ tasks quite easy as they do not have two allow every user or group with the permissions of installing shared printer drivers on their computers. However in some cases administrators may not want this configuration because of security reasons and to prevent printers from getting misused by the users. As an administrator you can configure this by following the steps given below:

  1. Logon to the computer with administrator account.
  2. Click on Start button.
  3. At bottom of start menu in search box type gpedit.msc command and press enter key.
  4. On Local Group Policy Editor snap-in under Computer Configuration expand Windows Settings and then expand Security Settings.
  5. Expand Local Policies and click on Security Options.
  6. From the right pane double click on Devices: Prevent users from installing printer drivers and on the opened box select Enabled radio button.
  7. Once done click on Ok button and close Local Group Policy Editor snap-in.
  8. Open Command Prompt and in command window type gpupdate /force to update here computer policy with latest configuration.
  9. Close Command Prompt.