Digital Hygiene in the Age of Adware III: The Printer as a Hostage – Windows, HP Smart and Why Linux Just Prints

My HP OfficeJet 8010 prints from my phone without a hitch. From Windows 11, suddenly nothing. No error message, no explanation, just a test page stuck in the queue with the status “Error – Printing”, with everything else waiting behind it.

The printer is fine and so is the network. What is broken is what Microsoft calls the modernisation of printing. And that is only half of the story. The other half was written by the printer manufacturer.

Part one: Microsoft protects you from printing

Microsoft is gradually phasing out classic printer drivers and pushing everyone onto its own universal solution. The timeline looks like this:

Once protected print is switched on for everyone, it will hurt. Incompatible printers are uninstalled when the mode is enabled, and they cannot be reinstalled while it stays active (Microsoft Learn).

The official reason is security. The print spooler has been full of holes for years, and the PrintNightmare vulnerability of 2021 made that painfully clear. The idea of driverless printing over the standard IPP protocol is a good one. The problem is the execution: the universal IPP driver does print, but it does not automatically replace every feature of the manufacturer’s driver. In my case it did not even replace the basics, meaning printing itself.

What happened to me

When I found out that protected print was behind the problem, I switched it off. A logical step, but it did not help. The printer still would not print and the queue stayed frozen.

A PowerShell diagnosis showed why. Windows Protected Print Mode was indeed disabled in the registry, but Windows had already “modernised” the queue, and turning the mode off undid none of it:

• it had switched the printer from the original HP driver to the generic Microsoft IPP Class Driver,
• it had connected it through a WSD port (Web Services for Devices), a protocol notorious for being unreliable on Windows,
• the print job sent zero bytes to the printer, got stuck and blocked the entire queue.

The original HP driver was still on the system. Windows had simply stopped using it.

This is the most insidious part of the whole thing. You turn off the feature that caused the problem, and the problem stays. At that point an ordinary user concludes that the printer is broken and goes to buy a new one.

The phone printed because it talks to the printer directly over IPP, without any “protective” layer. The only one that could not get along with the printer was Windows.

A ten-minute fix

First, switch off protected print: Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Printers & scanners → Windows protected print mode. You can check the state in the registry. Run PowerShell as administrator:

Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers"

Switching it off is not enough on its own. Find out what your printer is using:

Get-Printer | Format-Table Name, DriverName, PortName, PrinterStatus, JobCount -AutoSize

If you see Microsoft IPP Class Driver and a port starting with WSD-, you have the same problem I had. Clear the queue and restart the spooler:

Get-PrintJob -PrinterName "Printer name" | Remove-PrintJob
Restart-Service Spooler

Create a direct TCP/IP port to the printer’s IP address and switch the printer back to the original driver:

Add-PrinterPort -Name "IP_192.168.1.50" -PrinterHostAddress "192.168.1.50"
Set-Printer -Name "Printer name" -PortName "IP_192.168.1.50" -DriverName "HP OfficeJet 8010 series PCL-3"

You can find the exact driver name with Get-PrinterDriver. If the original driver is missing, download the full package from the manufacturer’s website and install it manually.

Finally, two preventive measures. Set up a DHCP reservation for the printer on your router so that its IP address never changes. And switch off automatic setup of network devices in Windows so that the system does not add more WSD queues behind your back.

Part two: HP Smart, or the printer that needs your account

Anyone who thinks that is the end of it has not met HP Smart. The app is supposed to be a convenient “hub” for printing and scanning. In reality it is a gateway into an ecosystem you cannot leave.

Let us start with the account. Signing in to HP Smart changed from recommended to mandatory at the end of 2020 (HP Community). If you want to scan a document from your own printer to your own computer, you first have to sign in to HP’s servers. Users complain that the app makes them sign in for every scan and solve an image captcha each time (HP Community). The moderators on HP’s forum answer with disarming frankness: there is no going back.

Then there is the way HP Smart gets onto computers. In December 2023 Microsoft admitted a bug that made the HP Smart app install itself automatically and renamed printers to “HP LaserJet M101-M106” (Pureinfotech). The app even appeared for people who owned no HP printer or HP computer at all, and it came back after being uninstalled or after a clean Windows install (Slashdot / XDA). The bug was Microsoft’s, but it showed how the whole mechanism works: Windows “guesses” your hardware and installs the manufacturer’s software for it straight away, without asking.

And thirdly, firmware. HP has long been pushing printer updates that block non-original cartridges, turning the printer you paid for into an ink sales terminal. In 2024 HP CEO Enrique Lores said openly that a customer who does not buy original supplies is a bad investment for the company. That is the business model described in its own words.

How to avoid HP Smart

On Windows you do not need HP Smart for anything:

• Printing: the full driver from HP’s website (the so-called full feature software) is enough, and it includes the HP Scan program.
• Scanning: the open-source program NAPS2 scans via WIA, TWAIN and over the network, and it does not ask for any account.
• The printer’s web interface: many HP printers can scan straight from the browser. Enter the printer’s IP address and look for the Webscan feature, which sometimes has to be enabled in the settings first.

Why this is a systemic problem

The individual bugs do not really matter. Everyone makes mistakes. What matters is what they have in common: in every case, someone other than you decides about your device.

Microsoft decides which driver your printer uses. HP decides whether you may scan without an account and which ink you may buy. Windows Update decides which app you install. You find out the moment nothing works.

That is adware in the broader sense: software whose real customer is not you, but somebody else’s business model.

Meanwhile, on Linux

Driverless printing over IPP, which Microsoft is now selling as a security innovation, has been used on Linux for years. The CUPS printing system supports the IPP Everywhere standard: you connect the printer to the network, the system finds it and prints.

Scanning is just as simple with SANE and its network driver for the eSCL standard, which most of today’s multifunction printers support. For HP printers there is also the HPLIP package, which HP itself develops as open source and which requires no account or sign-in.

Nothing switches by itself. Nobody changes your driver or installs apps without asking. And when something does not work, the logs tell you why, instead of a troubleshooter recommending that you restart your computer.

Think about it

I am not claiming Linux is for everyone. If you depend on a specific program that has no Linux replacement, switching will be harder.

But if your computer is mainly for browsing the web, email, office work and the occasional print or scan, Linux is worth a try. Distributions such as Linux Mint or Fedora can be run from a USB flash drive without installing anything. That way you can check whether your printer works before you change a thing. I explained why moving to Linux is a sensible step in the first part of this series.

Conclusion

A printer is not a complicated device. It receives data and prints it. Over the last few years, however, it has become a tool through which two corporations fight over your computer, with you standing in the middle.

The fix I described will give you your printing back. But in a year, when Microsoft switches protected print on for everyone, get ready for articles like this one again. Or install a system that leaves your printer alone.

Sources

• Windows Protected Print Mode FAQ – Microsoft Learn
• Windows Protected Print Mode and the end of third-party printer drivers – MyQ
• Windows Protected Print Mode kommt – Genius Bytes
• How to use HP Smart without creating an account – HP Community
• HP Smart requiring me to sign in each time to scan – HP Community
• Windows gets printer rename bug fix with KB5034510 – Pureinfotech
• A Windows Update bug is renaming everyone's printers – Slashdot