![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/hsg-7-20-14-01.png\" "\\"Image")
<\/a><\/p>\nAs I can see from this screenshot, for some reason the printer believes that the duplexer is not installed. I can easily change that, but every time I reboot my computer, it resets to Not installed<\/b>. I have tried everything I could think of. I have checked for newer printer drivers and I have gone to the print device itself to see if something changed…all to no avail.<\/p>\n
This is an issue I have lived with since I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 to Windows 8.1. I really hoped that upgrading to Windows 8.1 would fix it, but alas, it did not.<\/p>\n
Windows PowerShell to the rescue<\/h2>\n
This little issue is an annoyance, not a real problem. But it is what prompted me to see how to add back in printer options via Windows PowerShell. In fact, I wrote a script to do this very thing:<\/p>\n
PS C:\\> $hp = Get-Printer -Name *hp*<\/p>\n
PS C:\\> Set-PrinterProperty -PrinterName $hp.name -PropertyName Config:Duplexer -Value Installed<\/p>\n
The previous script worked great for a while, then it quit working.<\/p>\n
I decided I needed to do a bit of research as to how all this works. Unfortunately, there is no information about what a permissible PropertyName<\/b> looks like in the Help. To be honest, however, after doing my research, I am not sure how it could be documented because the property names are set by the people who write the printer driver. I did find a very interesting document. It is the Printer Driver Developers Guide<\/a>, and it makes for fascinating weekend reading.<\/p>\n The property names themselves are the ones that are in the printer driver data file. So I decided to use Windows PowerShell to retrieve the file and open it in Notepad. The command I used is:<\/p>\n notepad (Get-PrinterDriver -Name *hp*).datafile<\/p>\n The file looks fascinating, and so I decided to take a picture of it. As fascinating as the file is, in the following image, I am on line 1579. The good thing is that I can use the search feature in Notepad to find the information I need. It is shown here:<\/p>\n It looks to me like they changed the name of the feature from Duplexer to DuplexUnit. So, I make a little change. Perfect. It works! Here is the new script:<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Set-PrinterProperty -PrinterName $hp.name -PropertyName "Config:DuplexUnit" -Value Installed<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Get-PrintConfiguration -PrinterName $hp.name<\/p>\n PrinterName ComputerName Collate Color DuplexingMode<\/p>\n ———– ———— ——- —– ————-<\/p>\n HP2005DN True False TwoSidedLongEdge<\/p>\n Another way to find out about available printer properties is to use the Get-PrinterProperty<\/b> cmdlet, as I use here:<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Get-PrinterProperty -PropertyName $hp.name<\/p>\n cmdlet Get-PrinterProperty at command pipeline position 1<\/p>\n Then supply values for the following parameters:<\/p>\n PrinterName: PS C:\\> Get-PrinterProperty -PrinterName $hp.name<\/p>\n ComputerName PrinterName PropertyName Type Value<\/p>\n ———— ———– ———— —- —–<\/p>\n HP2005DN FormTrayTable String Config:AutoS…<\/p>\n HP2005DN Config:DuplexUnit String Installed<\/p>\n HP2005DN Config:Memory String 384MB<\/p>\n I can see from the previous output that the property is Config:DuplexUnit<\/b>. In my previous testing, the Installed<\/b> value is case sensitive (at least in my testing on my printer), so you may want to keep that in mind.<\/p>\n Note <\/b> Of course this cmdlet requires Admin rights, so start the Windows PowerShell console with an elevated account.<\/p>\n Now I have found the Windows PowerShell script I need to be able to make the change, and I want to make the change automatically each time my laptop reboots. Therefore, I want a startup job.<\/p>\n Creating a job to run at startup is pretty simple. For more information, read Use PowerShell to Create Job that Runs at Startup<\/a>.<\/p>\n I decided to use a script block instead of a script because in reality I had a one-liner, and it also makes the job more portable. First I create my startup trigger, then I register the scheduled job. It is two lines of script:<\/p>\n PS C:\\> $trigger = New-JobTrigger -AtStartup -RandomDelay 00:00:45<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Register-ScheduledJob -Trigger $trigger -ScriptBlock {Set-PrinterProperty -Printer<\/p>\n Name (Get-Printer -Name *hp*).name -PropertyName "Config:DuplexUnit" -Value Installed} -Na<\/p>\n me SetPrinterDuplexer<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Id Name JobTriggers Command Enabled<\/p>\n — —- ———– ——- —–<\/p>\n 2 SetPrinterDu… 1 Set-PrinterProperty -PrinterName (Get… True<\/p>\n I reboot my computer, and the first thing I do is open the Windows PowerShell console with Admin rights to see if my scheduled job ran. As shown here, it did:<\/p>\n Now for the big test. Is my printer set to duplex? I open Control Panel, navigate to my printer, click Device<\/b> Settings<\/b>, and sure enough, my duplexer is now installed. Sweet.<\/p>\n Two lines of script and I fixed an issue that has vexed me for two years. Not a bad ROI…not bad at all. Windows PowerShell for the win!<\/p>\n I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to fix a printer that keeps losing its duplexer. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the cool things about Windows PowerShell is that if I want to, I can generally use it to solve all of my issues. Sometimes the issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[445,404,3,61,45],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-client-side-printing","tag-printing","tag-scripting-guy","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to fix a printer that keeps losing its duplexer. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the cool things about Windows PowerShell is that if I want to, I can generally use it to solve all of my issues. Sometimes the issue […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nMake the change automatic<\/h2>\n
Now for the test<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n