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I have a HP Photosmart Printer and I am running Windows 7 Ultimate.

I am in the UK and have Windows Regional Settings configured correctly as UK.

As I really don't want to install HP's bloaty printer drivers I am using the drivers from Windows Update.

With the exception of General Everyday Printing, I am not able to save the Printing Shortcuts to be anything except Letter page size.

General Everyday Printing was set up as A4 by default on installation but I tend to use Fast/Economical Printing a lot more to save ink and time but it always defaults to Letter.

I can change it every time I print but that is getting rather tiresome.

I have tried updating the setting on the printer properties dialog, outside of any application, but it reverts back to Letter.

Is there any way to force the driver to use a different paper size for the Fast/Economical Printing?

It must be possible as General Everyday Printing is set to A4.

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It might not be what you have asked, but your question just sounds like a hard workaround...

I would suggest to just go through these steps:

  • Install the drivers, try to do this as bare as possible.
  • Remove all software as long as it doesn't break printing.
  • Go through Sysinternals Autoruns and disable anything from HP as long as it doesn't break printing.

The latest stable always tend to work better than those that come with Windows Update, it might contain some bloat but in the end it's just a bit more disk space that shouldn't hurt if you removed the extras.

If you refuse to do this then you could figure out where the setting is saved and prevent reverts.

  • Use Sysinternals Process Monitor to figure out the files and registry keys being accessed.
  • Save the settings of the printer and check in Process Monitor where it saved them.
  • Try to understand why it would revert, try to limit the write permissions on the key/file.

Good luck!

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Thanks, I'll check this out when I get home tonight. I don't know why I didn't think of ProcMon! – Shevek Sep 7 '10 at 9:24
Hmmm, there are several NAME NOT FOUND registry access failures: HKCU\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hewlett-Packard\HP Unidrv\Borderless Forms\A4, HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3\HP Photosmart 2570 series\DEMFileName, HKCU\Software\Hewlett-Packard\DEMFileData\HP Photosmart 2570 series\DEMFile. I think I'm going to have to install the HP bloat :/ – Shevek Sep 7 '10 at 21:24
Pah, there is no UK English download of the drivers, only US English. Still, I'll give it a try. – Shevek Sep 7 '10 at 21:28
still not saving the A4 setting :( – Shevek Sep 7 '10 at 22:18
What does ProcMon say with the new drivers? If it still shows NAME NOT FOUND you might want to create that A4 key to see if it helps... If you have another computer you might want to verify the behavior there so you can compare to it. Can you also check where the current setting loads from? It either loads it fine or it loads the default (because it was not found), and maybe it won't save it because the key is missing... – Tom Wijsman Sep 7 '10 at 22:54
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