Skip to content

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?

Tags:

17 thoughts on “Printer connection cannot be removed. Operation could not be completed”

  1. jonathan donnelly

    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. 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. 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.

  4. i disabled the wireless card and tried to remove the printer then got error 0x0…6be

    i executed the run command with rundll32 printui.dll, PrintUIEntry /gd http://192.168.1.1:1631\samsung and got error 0x0…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

  5. need to edit registry to resolve problem. just search for printer name in registry and delete everything referencing the printer in question

Comments are closed.