Since this week, several legacy Windows 10 PCs have been failing when trying to connect to printers hosted on fully patched Windows 11 machines. The issue has mostly affected DYMO label printers. I reproduced it in a lab using a fresh, fully patched Windows 10 installation and a fully patched Windows 11 printer host. Adding the shared printer fails with error 0x00000006. Has anyone found a reliable cause or fix for this?
3 Answers
Make sure the print server is using Type 4 drivers where possible and that the client can obtain the driver during installation. Older printers may not have compatible Type 4 drivers, so some environments have needed client-side registry workarounds. As a temporary, less secure workaround, disabling the administrator restriction for Point and Print and turning off RPC authentication privacy enforcement resolved this error in one environment. Those changes weaken printer security, so they should only be used after reviewing the risks and preferably replaced with a properly configured driver deployment.
I am seeing the same behavior and have not found a definitive fix yet. The failures appear to involve shared printer driver installation or the files supplied by the driver package, rather than basic network connectivity. Checking the driver store and testing with a newer, compatible driver may help narrow it down.
This may be related to the post-PrintNightmare security changes. Check that UAC is enabled, since connecting to a shared printer may require administrator approval when the client does not already have the correct driver installed. Standard users can also run into failures if UAC is disabled. Unfortunately, I have seen this fail even when the usual settings appear correct.
The Type 4 driver recommendation seems especially important for older label printers, since their legacy Type 3 packages may now be blocked or fail during remote installation.