Microsoft’s fix for Windows renaming printers is still pretty annoying

In one of the more bizarre bugs to come out this year, a number of users saw their printers renamed to “HP Laserjet M101-M106” with the latest Windows update…regardless of whatever brand or model their printer actually was. While not exactly a Y2K threat, this was understandably annoying, and probably caused a few headaches in offices where multiple printers were in use. Microsoft has released a fix for the issue, but unfortunately it’s not the smooth kind of fix that you might have been hoping to receive.

Instead of a simple Windows Update patch that repairs the auto-labeling error, affected users will need to manually download a custom troubleshooter application. The “Microsoft Printer Metadata Troubleshooter Tool December 2023” does what it says on the tin, at least according to the description on the page. It’ll restore the correct label to your attached or networked printer (assuming you don’t actually have the HP Laserjet M101-M106, of course) and remove the HP Smart application that was automatically downloaded and installed.

As Tom’s Hardware notes, it’s a bit irksome that in order to properly fix the issue and remove an extraneous application, you have to download another application. But apparently this particular gremlin had its claws so deep in the famously persnickety Windows printer system that it just couldn’t be extricated without creating four brand new executables (x32, x64, x86, and ARM, according to the support page). I suppose we’ll just have to deal with this sort of thing, until the paperless office finally arrives in the far-off year of 2005.