Prevent certain users from searching for printers on the network

In a large company where there is a computer network in place, it is not uncommon that each service has their own printers, with even some users having a dedicated printer just for themselves. If you don’t want an unauthorised person to access and use your networked printer, then there is a way that you can block the search for printers on the network.

First of all you will need to start the Windows Registry editor by clicking “Start”, “Run” and typing “regedit” into the field. Once this has been done you can click on OK and the Windows registry will be open.

Once this has been done you can go to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\Wizard\

Select the “Wizard” folder on the left hand side and then right click in the empty space that appears in the right hand window. Once this is done you will see a drop down menu appear and you will have to select “New” and “DWORD Value”.

A new entry will be created. You will now need to change its name and value. To change the name you can right click on it and select “Rename” from the drop down menu. To change the value you will need to select “Edit” from this same drop down menu. You will need to name this new key “Downlevel Browse” and give this a value of “1” in hexadecimal. This will prevent anyone in particular from browsing for printers on the network.

The new DWORD key

Editing the DWORD key to 1

If you don’t want to make the changes by yourself for fear of making a mistake then you can download these reg files which will perform the changes for you.

Prevent searching for printers on the network

Allow searching for printers on the network