[Windows] Manage printers from command line

On Windows, you can manage the printers connected to your computer from the command line either via Rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry on 32-bit systems or Cscript.exe and the Prnmngr.vbs script on 64-bit systems.

In the first scenario, you could for example change the system default printer using:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /y /q /n “PRINTER_NAME”

where the /q flag suppresses error notices - you may want to omit it if something goes wrong to do some debugging - and PRINTER_NAME is the exact name of the printer as shown from the "Devices and printers" control panel window.

The second scenario relies upon a tool to invoke scripts and one of the script utilities found under the %WINDIR%\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\ folder; here language depends on your system, it may be en-US, it-IT or whatever. In our example you would:

cscript.exe "%WINDIR%\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\LANGUAGE\Prnmngr.vbs" -t -p "PRINTER_NAME"

Of course, you can invoke those commands programmatically too.