Can I get the icon associated with an installed printer through .Net?

Question

I know how to get the list of all of the installed printers on a machine with .Net:

foreach (String printer in PrinterSettings.InstalledPrinters)
{        
    Console.WriteLine(printer.ToString());
}
Console.ReadLine();

InstalledPrinters is just a list of strings though. Is there any way to get the installed printer objects that contain both the name and the icon image that I would ordinarily see under "Devices and Printers" in the Windows Explorer?

This solution seems to be a good start, you can start playing with P/Invokes: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1063874/winapi-retrieving-icons-of-current-user-printers — Garo Yeriazarian, Jan 13 '11 at 16:38

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '11 at 16:29

2

The icon is normally embedded into either one of the dll files or the main EXE, look at the System.Drawing.Icon static methods, the link below is for WinForms, its slightly different with WPF as you have to create an ImageSource from the extracted icon stream.

How to: Extract the Icon Associated with a File in Windows Forms

answered Jan 13 '11 at 16:29

Lloyd

2,932
2
22
18

But, Which *.dll would you query for the icon of the printer ? I have tried querying the System.Printing.dll for which it gives the icon of the dll. not the printers. – Vishnu Pedireddi Sep 01 '12 at 00:37
The dll to look for is DDORes.dll in Windows\System32 directory. – Vishnu Pedireddi Sep 14 '12 at 22:48

Anton Zhelezniakou · Answer 2 · 2015-09-29T20:04:42.713

C# code for this task:

public static class PrinterIcons
{
    public static Dictionary<string, Icon> GetPrintersWithIcons(IntPtr hwndOwner)
    {
        Dictionary<string, Icon> result = new Dictionary<string, Icon>();

        Shell32.IShellFolder iDesktopFolder = Shell32.GetDesktopFolder();
        try
        {
            IntPtr pidlPrintersFolder;
            if (Shell32.SHGetFolderLocation(hwndOwner, (int)Shell32.CSIDL.CSIDL_PRINTERS, IntPtr.Zero, 0, out pidlPrintersFolder) == 0)
                try
                {
                    StringBuilder strDisplay = new StringBuilder(260);
                    Guid guidIShellFolder = Shell32.IID_IShellFolder;
                    IntPtr ptrPrintersShellFolder;
                    iDesktopFolder.BindToObject(pidlPrintersFolder, IntPtr.Zero, ref guidIShellFolder, out ptrPrintersShellFolder);
                    Object objPrintersShellFolder = Marshal.GetTypedObjectForIUnknown(ptrPrintersShellFolder, Shell32.ShellFolderType);
                    try
                    {
                        Shell32.IShellFolder printersShellFolder = (Shell32.IShellFolder)objPrintersShellFolder;

                        IntPtr ptrObjectsList;

                        printersShellFolder.EnumObjects(hwndOwner, Shell32.ESHCONTF.SHCONTF_NONFOLDERS, out ptrObjectsList);
                        Object objEnumIDList = Marshal.GetTypedObjectForIUnknown(ptrObjectsList, Shell32.EnumIDListType);
                        try
                        {
                            Shell32.IEnumIDList iEnumIDList = (Shell32.IEnumIDList)objEnumIDList;
                            IntPtr[] rgelt = new IntPtr[1];
                            IntPtr pidlPrinter;
                            int pceltFetched;
                            Shell32.STRRET ptrString;
                            while (iEnumIDList.Next(1, rgelt, out pceltFetched) == 0 && pceltFetched == 1)
                            {
                                printersShellFolder.GetDisplayNameOf(rgelt[0],
                                    Shell32.ESHGDN.SHGDN_NORMAL, out ptrString);
                                if (Shell32.StrRetToBuf(ref ptrString, rgelt[0], strDisplay,
                                    (uint)strDisplay.Capacity) == 0)
                                {
                                    pidlPrinter = Shell32.ILCombine(pidlPrintersFolder, rgelt[0]);
                                    string printerDisplayNameInPrintersFolder = strDisplay.ToString();

                                    Shell32.SHFILEINFO shinfo = new Shell32.SHFILEINFO();
                                    Shell32.SHGetFileInfo(pidlPrinter, 0, out shinfo, (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(shinfo), Shell32.SHGFI.PIDL | Shell32.SHGFI.AddOverlays | Shell32.SHGFI.Icon);
                                    Icon printerIcon = (Icon)Icon.FromHandle(shinfo.hIcon).Clone();
                                    Shell32.DestroyIcon(shinfo.hIcon);

                                    result.Add(printerDisplayNameInPrintersFolder, printerIcon);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                        finally
                        {
                            Marshal.ReleaseComObject(objEnumIDList);
                        }
                    }
                    finally
                    {
                        Marshal.ReleaseComObject(objPrintersShellFolder);
                    }
                }
                finally
                {
                    Shell32.ILFree(pidlPrintersFolder);
                }
        }
        finally
        {
            Marshal.ReleaseComObject(iDesktopFolder);
        }

        return result;
    }
}

Beware, that printer names in result dictionary will be printer names shown in Printers shell folder, and they can be different from printer names, used in PrinterSettings class (for example, network printers in Printers shell folder can be shown as " on ", and word "on" depends from windows localization and can be not machine network name). I don`t know yet how to get "real" printer name from IShellFolder to use it with standart PrinterSettings class.

Anyway, this code loads printers system icons, so you can use it for you task.

Upd: Shell32 class code, used in this code can be found here (too big for answer): http://pastebin.com/thJuWx45

To enumerate printers in IShellFolder better use IShellFolder.ParseDisplayName method, not EnumObjects, and send printer name from PrinterSettings.IntalledPrinters (such as "\ServerName\PrinterName" for network printers) to IShellFolder.ParseDisplayName param pszDisplayName, IShellFolder "Devices and printers" work with this well. So, after this we can enumerate real printer names ("\ServerName\PrinterName"), printer display names ("PrinterName on ServerName" as printers listed in "Devices and printers") and printer icons. — Anton Zhelezniakou, Sep 30 '15 at 09:43

Can I get the icon associated with an installed printer through .Net?

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