How to change the printer icon displayed in the Control Panel

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3

Printers are displayed in Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Devices and Printers often with a vendor supplied icon.

Is it possible to replace that with a custom icon?

Noah

Posted 2010-02-19T21:34:18.903

Reputation: 2 337

Answers

11

In Windows Explorer, go to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Device Metadata\dmrccache

And open the appropriate language-specific folder (e.g. for US it is en-us). There you will see subfolders corresponding to your installed devices. In each subfolder you'll see a folder named DeviceInformation. In that folder is the icon for your device.

You can either replace the icon itself, or you can edit the DeviceInfo.xml file and specify a different icon to use.

Chris

Posted 2010-02-19T21:34:18.903

Reputation: 233

2

@Chris: Thanks for this! I was looking for the same thing as the OP. However, I was wondering if you knew why only certain devices were visible in "Device Metadata"; for example, here's my setup: http://screencast.com/t/NTgyOTMxMTM I only see the icon/entry for the "Dell Laser MFP" in my en-US folder; I don't see anything for the other printers and icons. I don't suppose you know why, or how I might go about differentiating between them?

– Pandincus – 2010-03-09T14:43:04.853

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@Pandincus This only works when the device already has a custom icon installed - probably supplied by the manufacturer. If it is using a default icon (a generic icon for all devices of that category), it won't even have a subfolder there, let alone an icon to replace. In this case you need to follow this tutorial to add a custom icon.

– ADTC – 2015-05-09T05:38:47.690

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The location has changed for Windows 8.1. It's now:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceMetadataCache\dmrccache\en-US

Further, you can change the icon(s) to whatever you want using this Microsoft tool. This article describes how to use the tool.

judoman

Posted 2010-02-19T21:34:18.903

Reputation: 181

Great answer - I think this should be the new accepted answer once it has some more meat. Als, the "fine article" link is a self-reference... did you mean to link another superuser article here? – Jonas Heidelberg – 2014-10-08T12:40:28.810