Latest / The Windows Podcast with Fexingo: Microsoft, PC, and Enterprise Windows Conversations / Windows 11 24H2 Is Breaking Enterprise Printer Fleets
Transcript
- Lucas: So it's late May 2026, and if you're an IT admin managing a fleet of Windows 11 machines, you've probably noticed something weird with printing. Not the usual 'printer not responding' kind of weird. I'm talking about whole fleets of networked printers—Konica Minoltas, HPs, Ricohs—that were working fine on Windows 11 23H2 and then just stopped after the 24H2 feature update rolled out. Luna: Yeah, I've seen the chatter on r/sysadmin and Spiceworks. Some people are calling it the 'Great Printer Famine of 2026.' Is this actually a widespread thing or just a noisy minority? Lucas: It's real. Microsoft acknowledged it in KB5046742—that's a patch from mid-April—but the fix is partial. The core issue is that 24H2 defaults to the Internet Printing Protocol class driver, or IPP class driver, instead of loading the vendor's own driver. That's great for simplicity if you're a home user. For enterprise fleets with dozens of printer models, each with custom tray mappings, finishing options, and accounting codes? It's a disaster. Luna: So Microsoft finally killed off legacy driver support the way they've been threatening to for years? Lucas: Exactly. It's not a full kill, but they've changed the driver ranking so that the IPP class driver wins by default unless the vendor has specifically signed and submitted a v4 driver through Windows Update. And a lot of enterprise printer vendors—especially for older but perfectly good mid-range models—have not done that. So you boot up a freshly imaged 24H2 machine, connect to the network printer queue, and get the class driver. Suddenly your legal team can't print duplex, or the accounting codes are missing, or the stapler finisher just doesn't exist. Luna: If today's conversation gave you something usable—maybe a heads-up on a patch, or a workaround to test—this show stays ad-free because of listener support. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small thing that keeps these deep dives going. Lucas: Yeah, and we really appreciate that. So back to the printer problem: a Fortune 500 manufacturing company I spoke with said they had to roll back 2,000 endpoints from 24H2 to 23H2 last month because their shipping label printers—Zebra and SATO—relied on proprietary drivers that the IPP class driver just couldn't handle. Luna: Rolling back two thousand machines is not a small operation. How long did that take? Lucas: About three weeks of overnight deployments. And in the meantime, their warehouse was printing labels from a single Windows 10 kiosk that they kept offline. It's the kind of workaround that IT admins hate because it's fragile. But it's also a symptom of a bigger shift: Microsoft wants everyone on Universal Print and cloud-based print management. The IPP class driver is a stepping stone to that. Luna: But Universal Print requires a subscription, right? And not every enterprise wants their print jobs going through Microsoft's cloud. There are security and compliance concerns—especially for legal, healthcare, defense. Lucas: Exactly. And that's where the tension is. On one side, Microsoft is trying to modernize the Windows print stack—which, let's be honest, is held together with duct tape and legacy code from the Windows 95 era. On the other side, enterprises have invested millions in printer hardware and custom print solutions that rely on those old drivers. Microsoft's timeline is not their timeline. Luna: What about the patch? KB5046742—does it actually restore vendor drivers? Lucas: It does something more subtle. It adds a Group Policy setting called 'Do not allow IPP class driver for network printers.' If you enable that, Windows falls back to the old driver selection logic. But here's the catch: that policy only works if the vendor driver is already installed locally or available via Point and Print. Many IT shops have been moving away from Point and Print because of the PrintNightmare vulnerabilities. So they're caught between a security risk and a functional risk. Luna: Right, PrintNightmare was a huge deal. Microsoft basically broke Point and Print on purpose to force people to adopt newer models. So now you have to choose: either re-enable a known attack vector to get your printers working, or live with a crippled print experience. Lucas: That's the bind. And it's not just big corporations. I talked to a mid-size law firm in Chicago—about 300 users. They upgraded to 24H2 in March, and all their Ricoh multifunction devices, which are only three years old, stopped scanning to network folders. The class driver didn't support the scan to smb function. They spent two weeks on the phone with Ricoh support before someone figured out they needed to install the vendor package manually from the Ricoh download site—a package that hadn't been updated since 2024. Luna: And that package probably isn't signed with a SHA-256 certificate, so Windows might block it anyway with SmartScreen or the new driver signature enforcement. Lucas: Exactly. That's the other layer. Microsoft has been tightening driver signature requirements. For 24H2, any kernel-mode driver must be signed with an Extended Validation certificate, and that's expensive for printer vendors. Some smaller vendors have simply stopped supporting older models. They'd rather you buy a new printer with a native v4 driver. Luna: So is the long-term solution just to migrate all printers to ones that support IPP Everywhere or Mopria? Or does Microsoft need to adjust their strategy? Lucas: Both, honestly. The IPP Everywhere standard is mature—it's been around since 2013. And most modern enterprise printers from HP, Brother, and Canon do support it. But the installed base is huge. I've seen estimates that 40 percent of enterprise printers in use today are more than five years old. Those older models may never get an IPP Everywhere firmware update. So IT departments are facing a capital expenditure they didn't budget for. Luna: And that's on top of the Windows 10 end of life pressure. Many organizations are still finishing Windows 11 migrations. Now they have to audit every printer model in their fleet for compatibility. Lucas: Exactly. It's a perfect storm. And the patch from Microsoft—KB5046742—is really a band-aid. It doesn't fix the underlying driver availability problem. It just gives admins a way to bypass the class driver for specific network printers. But if you have hundreds of printer models, configuring that policy per printer queue is not scalable. Luna: I wonder if Microsoft could do something like a per-printer driver ranking mechanism—like a small PowerShell script that lets you assign a driver priority for each print queue. That would give IT the flexibility without needing a Group Policy for every model. Lucas: That's a great idea. Actually, there is a PowerShell cmdlet, Set-Printer, that lets you specify a driver name. But you still need to have that driver installed. The real issue is that the driver isn't available or signed. Microsoft could also extend the grace period for non sha-256 signed drivers for enterprise editions, but that would undermine their security roadmap. Luna: What about the print server role? Some organizations still use Windows Server as a print server. Does that help? Lucas: It helps if the print server is running an older OS like Windows Server 2022 that hasn't changed its driver model. But if you're running Windows Server 2025, which also uses the 24H2 codebase, you hit the same issue. And Microsoft has been pushing to deprecate the print server role entirely in favor of Universal Print. So even that is a stopgap. Luna: So practically, what should an IT admin do right now in May 2026 if they have a 24H2 fleet and broken printers? Lucas: First, apply KB5046742 if you haven't. Then, for each printer model that's broken, check the vendor's support site for a v4 driver that works with 24H2. If one exists, deploy it via SCCM or Intune. If not, you have three options: enable the Group Policy to block the IPP class driver and re-enable Point and Print—but be aware of the security implications; roll back to 23H2 until the vendor releases a driver; or replace the printer with a model that supports IPP Everywhere. None of these are great. Luna: And the timeline? When does Microsoft expect to have a more permanent solution? Lucas: They haven't committed to one. The official line is that 24H2's driver model is the future, and vendors need to adapt. But I think we'll see a flurry of driver updates over the next few months as enterprises escalate support cases. The real question is whether Microsoft will extend the Windows 10 support lifecycle to give organizations more time to transition. Right now, Windows 10 ESU ends in October 2026 for businesses. Luna: That's less than five months away. If you delay upgrading to 24H2 because of printer issues, you could end up on an unsupported OS by year's end. Lucas: Exactly. So the printer problem is not just a printer problem. It's a Windows lifecycle problem. And it's the kind of hidden cost that doesn't show up in a TCO spreadsheet until you're in the middle of it. Luna: Well, hopefully this episode gives some listeners a head start. I know I'm going to be checking our printer fleet inventory tomorrow. Lucas: Same here. And if you have a workaround that's working for you, we'd love to hear about it. You can find us at the show's page. Thanks for listening.