Printer Settings Keep Resetting in Windows 10 or 11? Fix Default Preferences and Drivers

Prerequisites and How Windows Applies Print Settings​

Before changing settings, it helps to know that Windows evaluates print configurations in a strict three-tier hierarchy. If a setting resets, a higher or lower tier is overriding the dialog you used:

• Tier 1: Application and Document Print Properties (Highest Priority): Programs such as Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge maintain their own internal print dialogs and cached last-used settings. Page setup rules saved inside a document (such as legal paper size or landscape orientation) or cached in a browser will override your Windows printer configuration every time you print from that app.
• Tier 2: Printing Preferences (Per-User Default): Configured in Windows Settings under Printing preferences, these choices are saved inside your individual Windows user profile in the registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Every new application session pulls from here first—unless the app overrides them.
• Tier 3: Printing Defaults (System-Wide Queue Default): Configured on the Advanced tab of Printer properties, these settings are stored in the system-wide driver configuration (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE). They act as the baseline for all users on the PC, background system services, and newly created user profiles, or whenever a driver cache resets.

To complete all steps in this guide—particularly locking system-wide Printing Defaults and replacing corrupted drivers—you need an administrator account on the PC and the printer must be powered on and connected via USB, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet.

Lock Your Default Printer and Save User Printing Preferences​

If Windows 11 seems to lose your paper tray, color, or duplex settings intermittently, first check whether Windows is silently switching your active printer queue in the background. By default, Windows changes the default printer to whichever device or virtual queue (such as Microsoft Print to PDF) you used most recently.

Windows 11 Procedure​

1. Press Win + I to open Settings.
2. In the left sidebar, select Bluetooth & devices, then click Printers & scanners on the right.
3. Scroll down to the Printer preferences section and set the Let Windows manage my default printer toggle to Off.
4. Scroll back up to your list of installed printers and click the name of your primary physical printer.
5. Click the Set as default button at the top of the printer's management page. (This button only appears after Let Windows manage my default printer is turned off.)
6. On the same page, click Printing preferences.
7. In the driver dialog window that opens, configure your everyday choices—such as Orientation (Portrait or Landscape), Print on Both Sides (Duplex), Color Mode (Black and White / Grayscale vs. Color), Paper Size, and Paper Source / Tray.
8. Click Apply, then click OK to write these settings to your user profile.

Windows 10 Path Differences​

If you are performing this task on a Windows 10 PC, press Win + I and go to Devices > Printers & scanners. Clear the Let Windows manage my default printer check box, click your printer in the list, select Manage, and click Set as default. Then select Printing preferences on the left side of the management screen to save your user defaults.

Lock System-Wide Printing Defaults in Printer Properties​

Saving Printing preferences only updates your personal profile. If you share the computer, print from apps running with elevated administrator privileges, or use a printer driver that resets its user-level cache after sleep or reboot, you must also lock the baseline Printing Defaults on the driver's Advanced tab.

1. Press Win + I and navigate to Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Click your printer's name, then select Printer properties (do not click Printing preferences for this step).
3. If your printer driver displays a Change Properties button with a User Account Control (UAC) shield icon on the General tab, click it first and approve the administrator prompt so all tabs become editable.
4. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the Printer properties window.
5. Click the Printing Defaults... button near the bottom left.
6. Configure the exact same paper size, duplexing, color/grayscale, and copy count options that you set in your user preferences.
7. While on the Advanced tab or inside Printing Defaults, check whether your driver (common on HP and enterprise PCL6 drivers) has causes of duplicate copy counts:
   • Ensure Copies is explicitly set to 1.
   • If copies keep jumping from 1 to 2 on their own, open the Device Settings tab in Printer properties and disable Mopier Mode or Job Storage, or uncheck Enable advanced printing features on the Advanced tab.
8. Click Apply and OK inside the Printing Defaults window, then click Apply and OK in the main Printer properties window.

Check Whether an Application Is Overriding Windows Defaults​

When both Printing preferences and Printing Defaults show your saved settings in Windows Settings, yet jobs still come out wrong (for example, printing in color or single-sided), the application generating the print job is overriding the driver. Check the specific software you are printing from:

• MicrosoftEdge and Google Chrome: Chromium-based browsers bypass the standard Windows print dialog by default and cache their own last-used settings (including destination printer, margins, scale, two-sided mode, and color). Press Ctrl + P in the browser, expand More settings, adjust your options, and print one test page so the browser updates its internal cache. If the browser still ignores tray or finishing rules from your driver, click Print using system dialog... (Ctrl + Shift + P) at the bottom of the preview panel to force it to read your Windows Printing preferences.
• Microsoft Word and Excel: Office documents store page size, margins, orientation, and sometimes specific paper tray assignments directly inside the .docx or .xlsx file. Open File > Print > Page Setup (at the bottom of the settings column) and check the Paper tab. If Default tray is set to a specific tray instead of Use printer settings, Word will override your driver defaults whenever that document or template (Normal.dotm) is opened.
• Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader: Acrobat maintains its own page scaling, auto-rotate, and paper source selection in its print dialog. Open Ctrl + P in Acrobat, verify whether Choose paper source by PDF page size is checked, and click the Properties button next to the printer name to verify that Acrobat initialized the session with your Windows preferences.

Verify That Your Settings Persist​

Before moving on to driver updates or reinstallation, test whether your configuration holds across sessions:

1. Close all open web browsers, PDF viewers, and Office apps completely so any temporary in-memory Printing Properties are discarded.
2. Press Win + R, type notepad, and press Enter to open a clean Notepad window that relies directly on the standard Windows print stack.
3. Press Ctrl + P (or click File > Print).
4. Confirm that your physical printer is preselected as the default device.
5. Click Preferences (or More settings in the modern Windows 11 print dialog) and verify that your saved duplex, color/grayscale, and paper tray selections are already active without manual changes.

If Notepad loads the correct defaults every time, your Windows configuration is working properly and any remaining resets are isolated to a specific third-party app. If Notepad or the Windows Printing preferences window itself reverts to factory settings after you close it or restart the PC, your printer driver or registry DevMode cache is failing and needs to be repaired.

Update or Replace the Printer Driver When Settings Still Reset​

When a printer queue refuses to retain Printing preferences or Printing Defaults, or when advanced tabs (such as Eco Mode, custom paper sizes, or booklet finishing) disappear entirely, the culprit is usually one of two things:

1. Generic IPP Class Driver vs. Full Vendor Driver: When you connect a Mopria-certified printer in Windows 11, Windows often installs it automatically using the built-in Microsoft IPP Class Driver. While reliable for basic printing, the generic class driver does not expose all manufacturer-specific settings and can fail to sync custom tray or finishing defaults with the printer's firmware.
2. Corrupted Driver Configuration Cache: When a print queue is upgraded across Windows feature updates or switched between a Universal PCL driver and a model-specific driver, its registry DevMode structure can become corrupted or locked, causing changes to silently discard or trigger error 0x00000709.

Step 1: Check Windows Protected Print Mode (Windows 11 24H2 and Later)​

Before installing a manufacturer driver on Windows 11 version 24H2 or newer, verify that Windows protected print mode is not enabled. When enabled, this security mode forces Windows to use only the modern IPP print stack and blocks all third-party x64 and ARM64 printer drivers.

1. Open Settings (Win + I) > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Scroll down to Printer preferences and look at Windows protected print mode.
3. If a button labeled Set up is shown, the mode is currently off and you can install manufacturer drivers normally.
4. If a button labeled Turn Off is shown, Windows protected print mode is active and blocking vendor drivers. Click Turn Off and select Yes if you need to install your printer manufacturer's full driver package.

Step 2: Cleanly Remove the Existing Printer Queue and Driver Package​

Warning: Removing a printer queue and its driver package deletes all custom presets, saved port bindings, and shared printer permissions for that device on your PC. If your printer connects over a static IP address on an office network, note its IP address on the Ports tab of Printer properties before proceeding so you can easily reconnect it.

Click to expand...

Simply clicking Remove in Settings leaves the old driver files and cached registry keys behind. To force Windows to rebuild a clean configuration:

1. Open Settings (Win + I) > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Click your printer and click Remove at the top, then click Yes to confirm.
3. If your printer connects via a USB cable, unplug the USB cable from the PC now so Windows does not immediately auto-reinstall the generic driver.
4. Press Win + X and select Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin), then click Yes at the UAC prompt.
5. Restart the Print Spooler service so no background process locks the driver files by running:
   Restart-Service -Name Spooler -Force
6. In the same elevated window, open the Print Server Properties dialog directly to the Drivers tab by running:
   printui.exe /s /t2
7. In the Print Server Properties window, select your printer's driver in the list and click Remove....
8. Select Remove driver and driver package and click OK. Confirm the deletion prompts, then click Close.

Step 3: Install the Latest Manufacturer Driver and Reapply Defaults​

1. Download the current Windows 11 full driver package (or dedicated model-specificPCL6/PostScript driver rather than a generic Universal driver) directly from your printer manufacturer's support site (such as HP, Brother, Canon, Epson, Xerox, or Ricoh).
2. Run the manufacturer's installer as an administrator and follow the prompts to connect the printer over your network or reconnect the USB cable when instructed.
3. Once installed, return to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, select the newly created printer queue, and repeat the steps in the first two sections of this guide to configure both Printing preferences and Printing Defaults.
4. Restart your PC and check Printing preferences once more to confirm that the new driver retains your configuration across a full reboot.

Troubleshooting Common Failure Modes and Rollback​

If your settings still fail to save or you encounter permission errors during the procedure, match your symptom to the fixes below:

• Changes in Printing Preferences vanish the moment you close the window or fail with Error 0x00000709:
  This happens when your user account lacks write permissions to its own printer registry keys or when a stale per-user DevMode entry conflicts with the system driver. First, check if you are using a shared network printer hosted on a Windows Print Server; if the server administrator locked the queue or deployed settings via Group Policy or Microsoft Intune, local changes will be overwritten on the next policy refresh. On a standalone PC, press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows, right-click the Windows key in the left pane, select Permissions..., and ensure your user account and Administrators have Full Control checked.
• "Remove driver package" fails with "The specified printer driver is currently in use":
  The Print Spooler is still holding an orphaned print job or port lock. Open an elevated Terminal (Admin) window and stop the spooler service (Stop-Service -Name Spooler -Force). Open File Explorer, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS, and delete all files inside that folder (leave the PRINTERS folder itself intact). Return to the terminal, start the spooler (Start-Service -Name Spooler), and immediately run printui.exe /s /t2 again to remove the driver.
• Rolling back a faulty new printer driver:
  If a newly updated printer driver causes crashes, garbled pages, or missing trays that worked previously, press Win + X and select Device Manager. Expand the Print queues or Printers category (if Printers is hidden, click View > Show hidden devices), right-click your printer, and select Properties. On the Driver tab, click Roll Back Driver if available, or click Update Driver > Browse my computer for drivers > Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer to switch back to the Microsoft IPP Class Driver or your previous driver version.