Microsoft never ceases to bring the SMH. Today I attempted to update a driver for a Canon 6055 copier here at the office. The driver I had was a dead duck, so out to get the “handy dandy UFR II driver”. I downloaded it, noted that it was for 64-bit Windows 2012 R2 server and selected it. Then I went to save it, and this is the error that greets me:

“Printer Properties – Printer settings could not be saved. This operation is not supported.”

So, what the hell does this mean? Suddenly the best and the brightest that Microsoft has to offer cannot save printer settings, and saving of printer settings is an operation that is not supported. Now step back and think about that for a second, saving your settings is not supported.

The error is not wrong, but it is massively misleading. The error doesn’t come from the print driver system but rather from the print sharing system. That there is no indication of that is just sauce for the goose. What’s the fix? You have to unshare the printer on the server, and then update the driver, and then reshare the printer. The path is quick, just uncheck the option to share from the neighboring tab, go back, set your new driver, then turn sharing back on. It’s an easy fix however because the error is not written properly, you don’t know where to go to address it. A more elegant system would either tell you to disable sharing before changing drivers or because you are already sharing and trying to install a new driver, programmatically unshare, save the driver, then reshare. Hide all of this from the administrator, as you do. That’s not what Microsoft does; they do awkward and poorly stated errors leading you on a wild goose chase.

But now I know, so that’s half the battle right there. Dumb, Microsoft. So Dumb.