In one of many more unusual bugs to come back out this 12 months, a variety of customers saw their printers renamed to “HP Laserjet M101-M106” with the newest Windows replace…no matter no matter model or mannequin their printer really was. While not precisely a Y2K risk, this was understandably annoying, and doubtless brought about just a few complications in places of work the place a number of printers had been in use. Microsoft has launched a repair for the difficulty, however sadly it’s not the graceful type of repair that you just might need been hoping to obtain.

Instead of a easy Windows Update patch that repairs the auto-labeling error, affected customers might want to manually obtain a customized troubleshooter utility. The “Microsoft Printer Metadata Troubleshooter Tool December 2023” does what it says on the tin, not less than in keeping with the outline on the web page. It’ll restore the right label to your connected or networked printer (assuming you don’t even have the HP Laserjet M101-M106, in fact) and take away the HP Smart utility that was routinely downloaded and put in.

As Tom’s Hardware notes, it’s a bit irksome that as a way to correctly repair the difficulty and take away an extraneous utility, you must obtain one other utility. But apparently this specific gremlin had its claws so deep within the famously persnickety Windows printer system that it simply couldn’t be extricated with out creating 4 model new executables (x32, x64, x86, and ARM, in keeping with the assist web page). I suppose we’ll simply need to take care of this form of factor, till the paperless workplace lastly arrives within the far-off 12 months of 2005.