mikiem2
Moderator
windowscentral[.]com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-11-finally-pulls-the-plug-on-legacy-printer-drivers-starting-january-2026
Microsoft's removing V3 & [Win8 era] V4 drivers from Win11. This should really only effect using Windows built-in printing rather than the drivers released by the printer manufacturers themselves, and then of course only if the printer is pretty old.
mikiem2
Moderator
tomshardware[.]com/peripherals/printers/microsoft-stops-distrubitng-legacy-v3-and-v4-printer-drivers
learn.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/print/end-of-servicing-plan-for-third-party-printer-drivers-on-windows
Tom's Hardware's article about this included a link to Microsoft's original plans [2nd link above] -- while it seems to be undated, it mentions Win10 21H2. In that doc it sounds like Microsoft would only remove printer drivers from appearing on/in Windows Update: "For Windows 11+ and Windows Server 2025+, no new printer drivers will be published to Windows Update." And the doc further states: There are no plans to disable print features specifically related to the legacy printer driver platform."
HOWEVER, that 2nd quote *may* be false (!). The printer-related changes were included in January's optional update, and will be in February's regular update. I installed January's optional update when it became available on January 29, and through this past Wednesday, 2/4/26, everything was fine. Since then Edge was updated, and no longer supports printing to my printer. It's NOT a bug in Edge, since the same version works just fine in a copy of Win11 that has not had January's optional update installed. Other apps I tested, including browsers, still print fine. I **suspect** it has something to do with Microsoft's/Edge's webview2. If that's true, printing problems may crop up in any other apps using webview2, which Microsoft has been promoting to devs.
mikiem2
Moderator
windowscentral[.]com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-was-wrong-windows-11-is-not-ending-support-for-legacy-printer-drivers-after-all
Microsoft has changed its tune, now saying that if a printer works today with Win11 it will continue to work. My personal opinion, FWIW, is that Microsoft got a ton of negative corporate feedback that older printers had stopped working with some of their software, and because of that, Microsoft backed off whatever changes they made to the code that's used by Edge, & I assume by whatever corporate apps.
I base that on the simple fact that Edge worked with my printer *without* the Windows update, but Not after the update was installed. Then, after Edge was updated, it worked with the printer again. I would guess that Edge isn't primarily used for printing, which is why I *think* it had something to do with code that Edge uses, and would be included in an update to Edge, but maybe not Edge itself.
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