Category Archives: HP

Disabling HP Printer Notifications using Group Policy and Group Policy Preferences

The HP printer status notification is enabled by default.  You can disable it manually for each printer just by clicking on the Settings option when the GIANT ANNOYING BIG SQUARE BOX pops up in the bottom right corner of your screen, but of course, you would not want to do that for every client; thus, GPOs become very useful.

Depending on your environment, there are a couple ways to accomplish this.

  1. If you have your server acting as the print server and sharing out all your printers, you are in luck.  HP makes a Universal Print Driver AD Tool Kit and Template that you can add to your GPM console.  Once the new options are added, you can easily disable the status notification option by checking a box.
  2. Download the HP Universal Print Driver AD Template and Guide Park-1.4 from HP’s site.
  3. Open Group Policy Management Console.
  4. Right click on the User Configuration section and add the .adm file you just downloaded.  This will give you added features. See Figure 1.

    Figure 1

  5. Figure 1By Selecting “Disabled”, you will stop the status notification from popping up on all your HP printers.
  6. NOTE: This is a User Configuration policy, thus, you can only apply this to an OU that contains users, not PCs.  Also, this will ONLY work if you are using/installing shared printers from the server.  If you are using local IP printers, jump to the next section.

If you are using local IP printers, disabling the status notification is a bit more complicated.  This is because you can only affect the HP Laser Jet settings using the options under the Computer Configuration section, not the User Configuration section since these are installed as local IP printers, not shared printers.  The printer settings are connected to the PC, not the users.  Unfortunately, the HP AD Template only adds options under the User Configuration, not the Computer Configuration, so you need to follow these steps to accomplish the same task.

  1. On an XP workstation, install the IP printer(s) you need to modify. Go to the following registry section: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\
    Printers\<PrinterName>\PrinterDriverData
  2. Create a DWORD value named: SSNPNotifyEventSetting, Give it a “0” value and  repeat this step for EVERY printer you need to modify.
  3. Create a new GPO called: Disable HP LJ Printer Status Notification
  4. Expand Computer Configuration\Preferences\Windows Settings\Registry
  5. Right click on the right side and choose New/Registry Wizard.
  6. Select the PC on which you installed the printers above.
  7. In the bottom section, go to the registry DWORD setting you just created and select it.
  8. Most of the default settings should suffice, but you may want to associate the

    Figure 2

    preference with a specific OU. See Figure 2.  If you do:

  • Open the preference you just created.
  • Click the Common tab.
  • Check Item-level targeting and then click the Targeting button.
  • Click on New Item and select Organizational Unit.
  • Select the OU to which you want to apply this preference.

Note: You can rename the preference in order to keep track of the printers you are modifying.

Finally reboot the PC

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