Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed

Sometimes things that seem so obvious aren’t. Earlier this week, I was trying to be cool and add a new network printer to a number of computers using a basic script. After a number of attempts at a test work station, I finally found a solution that I thought worked well. However, when attempting to remove some of my earlier failed attempts at adding the printer I encountered the following error ‘Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed.’

What do you mean printer connection cannot be removed? I am the Administrator and therefore though shalt be removed.

Well apparently, the easiest way to resolve this problem is to:

  1. Disable your active network adapter or unplug the network cable
  2. Delete the printer that you were having trouble deleting
  3. Enable your active network adapter or reconnect the network cable

Sometimes you wonder, are we all webmasters living lives as webslaves?

11 Comments to “Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed”

  1. jonathan donnelly 16 April 2007 at 6:26 am #

    hello their had the same problem for ages
    could not find a solution from microsoft or technet
    drove me crazy.

    and now you have sorted the problem for me

    thankyou very much

    jd

    have a nice life

    god bless

  2. Leo 16 April 2007 at 7:39 am #

    Just to elaborate on this a bit further, the reason you can’t remove the connection is normally because it was added using the /ga switch. So to remove it, you also have to use the delete per machine printer connections option. An example of this would be:

    rundll32 printui.dll, PrintUIEntry /gd \\server\printername

  3. Charles Patey 2 March 2008 at 7:38 am #

    Worked for me as well – great.

  4. Lars 29 March 2008 at 8:04 pm #

    Goodness!!! Thank you! What an “F” simple solution! This was driving me crazy!!! Now that icon is gone… never going to use that Wizard again. I’ll just manually connect to the networked printer.

  5. peter g 5 April 2008 at 9:25 am #

    Wow. works! Microsoft vista knowlwge base is yet again useless. Thanks

  6. Printer Connection cannot be removed

    [...] message sources, like here suggest breaking network connection with the printer in question may be needed before windows [...]

  7. Charriet 23 July 2009 at 1:34 pm #

    You are a genius – it worked – 4 duff network printers removed!

    Charles
    =======

  8. odsantos 2 September 2009 at 1:23 pm #

    i disabled the wireless card and tried to remove the printer then got error 0×0…6be

    i executed the run command with rundll32 printui.dll, PrintUIEntry /gd http://192.168.1.1:1631\samsung and got error 0×0…709

    the samsung clp-300 was installed through a us robotic usr9108 print server and now that is disconnect i cannot remove the entry

    it is only possible to do reconfiguring the router and attaching the usb printer

    thanks

  9. Jon 21 October 2009 at 11:07 am #

    You are all idiots, none of this worked. Please someone find a real solution instead of this pile of crap.

  10. blockcipher 27 October 2009 at 12:39 pm #

    This worked fantastic. Thanks!

  11. passt 26 July 2010 at 6:06 am #

    great, it works and it’s so easy :)


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