If your printer has been spontaneously printing at random, you’re not alone – and you can almost certainly blame a wonky Windows update from Microsoft.
The company has acknowledged a strange print issue affecting some users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 who installed recent updates for the operating systems. The peculiar behavior affects USB connected dual-mode printers that support both USB Print and IPP Over USB protocols and Microsoft has been forced to resort to a Known Issue Rollback (KIR).
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There is good news for anyone running the latest version of Windows 11 (that is, Windows 11 24H2) in that the problem does not appear to have reared its head there. But if you have Windows 10 22H2, Windows 11 22H2 or Windows 11 23H2, phantom printouts may be affecting your device.
In an advisory notice relating to Windows 11, Microsoft says:
After installing the January 2025 Windows preview update (KB5050092), released January 29, 2025, or later updates, you might observe issues with USB connected dual-mode printers that support both USB Print and IPP Over USB protocols. You might observe that the printer unexpectedly prints random text and data, including network commands and unusual characters. Resulting from this issue, the printed text might often start with the header “POST /ipp/print HTTP/1.1”, followed by other IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) related headers. This issue tends to occur more often when the printer is either powered on or reconnected to the device after being disconnected.
The issue is observed when the printer driver is installed on the Windows device, and the print spooler sends IPP protocol messages to the printer, causing it to print unexpected text.
A similar acknowledgement has been attached to the KB5050081 update for Windows 10.
For most people, the Known Issue Rollback should fix things, but system admins looking after managed devices will need to follow the instructions on the advisory pages for removing the update using Group Policy.
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