Find Print Drivers and Isolation Settings in Regedit

This article outlines how to locate the list of installed print drivers and verify their driver isolation configurations within the Windows Registry Editor. By navigating the appropriate registry paths, system administrators can inspect installed printer driver versions and review or modify the process isolation settings that prevent unstable drivers from crashing the main Print Spooler service.

Registry Location for Installed Print Drivers

To inspect the list of installed print drivers, open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments

Under this key, expand the architecture matching your operating system:

• For 64-bit systems: Windows x64\Drivers
• For 32-bit systems: Windows NT x86\Drivers
• For ARM-based systems: Windows ARM64\Drivers

Inside the Drivers folder, keys are organized by driver architecture versions:

• Version-3: Represents standard user-mode drivers (V3).
• Version-4: Represents newer XPS-based drivers (V4).

Expanding the Version-3 or Version-4 folder displays individual subkeys for every installed print driver on the system.

Inspecting Driver Isolation Settings

Driver Isolation runs print drivers in separate processes (PrintIsolationHost.exe) outside of the core Spooler service (spoolsv.exe).

To check the isolation setting for a specific driver:

1. Navigate to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows x64\Drivers\Version-3\<Driver Name>
2. In the right-hand pane, locate the DWORD (32-bit) value named DriverIsolation.

DriverIsolation Values Defined

• 0 (None): The driver runs directly inside the main spoolsv.exe process. A crash in this driver will bring down the entire print spooler service.
• 1 (Isolated): The driver runs in its own dedicated PrintIsolationHost.exe process, completely isolated from other drivers and the spooler.
• 2 (Shared): The driver runs in a shared PrintIsolationHost.exe process with other drivers configured for shared isolation.

If the DriverIsolation DWORD does not exist under a driver’s key, the system defaults to the driver’s internal manifest configuration or the global system print policy.