SetDefaultPrinter is a tiny utility to set the Windows default printer. But instead of having users go find the printer list on the control panel, it presents them with a simple dialog box with a list of printers and a Select button.I wrote this utility as part of a desktop computer deployment I was doing at the time. I was a one-man IT department, so any reduction in baby-sitting of users was a good thing. And let's face it, some users need a lot more babysitting than others. We had about 50 people and 10 printers, and I discovered a problem early in the project: when a roaming user logged in to a computer for the first time, the default printer was not always consistent. And in some cases, none of the printers was set as default, which caused many programs to have fits and toss up errors.After the rollout, and any time they used a different computer, users would blindly print their documents, sometimes privacy-sensitive ones, and then realize they didn't know what printer it went to. Some of the users were barely computer literate, so I had to find an easy and consistent way to enable them to select the default printer for themselves.
You can use SetDefaultPrinter any way you choose. I created it to be run from the default Windows user login script so each time a user logged in to a computer for the first time, the dialog box would pop up and force them to make a selection. It's small enough that it can be stored in the .\Netlogon folder and run directly from there. I also created shortcuts for the Desktop, and "pinned" on the Start Menu, so users could run it whenever they needed.SetDefaultPrinter has no installer, only a ZIP file. It consists of a single EXE file and only requires Microsoft .Net Framework. It was developed on a Windows 7 system with .Net 3.5, and I'm sure it will be forwards-compatible to newer versions for quite some time, but I'm not sure how backwards-compatible it is to older versions.I've used SetDefaultPrinter successfully on Windows XP, 7, 8, Server 2003, and Server 2008, but you should test it in your environment to make sure there are no unintended consequences.Probable future enhancements: - command line switches to choose the printer - timeout with default selection - invisible operation - option to run as Windows Tray applet.
