How to make the printer device picture show up in Devices?

In our small office, we have a couple of shared large-format plotters and multi-function print/copy/scan devices. Due to the nature of one of the plotters, we're having to install the plotter directly on each workstation using the device's LAN IP address, as opposed to connecting to it through the Server.

When I connected to the device through the server, the icon for the device on my workstation would change to a picture of the actual correct model plotter. However when I connect directly using the plotter's IP address, it shows the generic Printer icon.

Is there a way to make it show the picture of the actual device instead of the generic icon, even when connecting to it directly?

we're having to install the plotter directly on each workstation using the device's LAN IP address

"Directly" typically means via a cable (USB, serial or parallel cable). But with an IP address typically means you are connecting through the network via wireless or Ethernet. Frankly, I believe through the network would be better instead of sharing the server's connection.

These images come from the drivers - they really don't mean a whole lot and are often mixed up when multi-function devices are used. For example, I have a printer/copier/fax/scanner but they show up as two device in Control Panel as my HP 7525 with a icon that looks like my device, and as "Fax" that uses the generic fax machine icon.

The big issue is, everything works.

In looking at my own setup, I am not seeing anyway to change these icons from within Control Panel or the device's Properties. Do all the devices work properly for you? If so, I would learn to live with it. But if you feel you must change it, you can drill down into your boot drive and change out the .ico image file for the device.

For W7, go to: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Device Metadata\dmrccache\en-US where YourName is your user account name.

In that folder, you should see some odd looking folder names. Double click to open each one, then double click on DeviceInformation. If the wrong one, back out. Do this until you reveal which device you are looking for. When you find the one for your device, you can replace the .ico file with the one you want. Obviously, you will have to have the one you want ready to copy and paste into that folder.

For W8 and W10 users, the folder locations have changed and are now under: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceMetadataCache\dmrccache\en-US

Well here's the kicker. I installed the driver on each workstation, by creating the IP port pointing to the plotter's LAN IP address, and on every other machine, the correct icon showed up.

However on my machine, it still shows the generic icon. I have removed the printer device, removed the driver completely through Print Management, removed the DRIVERS even (for other reasons besides this), and then reinstalled and it still shows the generic icon on my machine. I did the exact same install process on all machines but only mine shows the generic icon. Seems weird. A co-worker's machine is the exact same build, exact same hardware as my machine (I built them both at the same time), and his shows the icon but mine doesn't.

Also I found the folder for the particular device in the location listed above, and it shows the correct ICO icon file in that folder. The DeviceInfo XML file points to that correct ICO file, same as my other printers and devices do, but it still won't show the correct icon in Devices and Printers.

Not sure what is happening then - assuming all these systems have the same Windows version and setups.

You might have a corrupt icon cache/database.