𝐔𝐑𝐋 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐂𝐔𝐓𝐒 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊, open printer dialogue.

Well, I have experimented with this, and may be able to help - but the OP's comment early on "I am not going to mess around with add-ons like context menu "open with" as that does not fix the bug in Win10 causing shortcut to open printer dialogue." suggests that it may not.

I dropped a URL shortcut onto my desktop from my browser address bar, and when I rt-click it and select properties, it shows (or rather, showed) me (under General) that it would open with Firefox (my browser):

Note that one can change the program to open with that button right there. I then tried a rt-click (which looked like this:
)
selected 'Open With' and the following option list appeared:

I selected Internet Browser - I did not select 'always...' - this had no apparent deleterious effect - FF still opened when I double-clicked the sc. I then tried again, this time selecting 'IB' and the 'always...' option - this didn't stop the sc from working - but it surely messed up my context menu: this no longer showed 'Open With', or any of the other 'personalised' items:

In addition, the properties 'general' tab no longer shows an option to change the program:

Nothing I subsequently did could fix this - under 'Settings>Deflt apps>choose by file type', the only option was the existing 'Internet Browser' one (no sign of FF there). I tried removing the complete .url entry from HKEY_Classes_root in the registry, in the hope that it might magically revert to some helpful default, but no joy - the sc still opened fine, but 'open with' was gone. I confirmed the behaviour for two other users (thus messing up their ability to ever change the default app to run), and finally had to resort to restoring this morning's Macrium Reflect image.

That done, I set about investigating further, and first confirmed that the behaviour was repeatable (as Einstein apparently did not remark: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result"). I tried adding an 'Open with' entry in the registry under HKCR\.url, to no avail, then tried again under HKCR\InternetShortcut (which is where .url points), following advice I read here:
How to Fix the Missing “Open with” Option on the Windows 10 Right-Click Context Menu

Apparently I had only to read one of the posts above to find Ten Forums has its own guide here: Add or Remove Open with Context Menu to URL files in Windows 10

But it worked! My rt-click now offered an 'open with' option:

I was slightly surprised that its name did not match the quirky name I had given the menu item, but no mind: it worked. I could now select FF as the program to open, and my context menu for the sc was then back to normal.

Now you (or rather, the OP) might think 'so what, I want to get rid of my printer error', but I hope that getting back the 'open with' option will allow them to select another program other than 'Internet Browser', perhaps Notepad, for example, and thus purge the messed up 'thing' that links to the printer - then hopefully 'open with' can be set to the browser of choice (but not that tiresome generic 'IB' option). I do think MS has messed up here, as losing that 'open with' is a pain.

I hope the OP gets to try this out, if only to say that it fails to fix the error. hth, Martin

As the OP and most others seem to have dropped away, I am perhaps insufficiently hesitant about interjecting myself and my seemingly similar problem at this point.

Applying my interpretation of mngerhold's entry (above), I begin with this:



Note several facts pertaining to that image: (1) As illustrated in a separate post, my Internet Shortcut icons (for e.g., Amazon A) are washed out. (2) The Properties for my icons are not like those shown by mngerhold's first situation (above). In particular, "Type of file" differs, and instead of "Opens with" I have merely "Description." (3) My context menu does not offer "Open with."

In those several regards, my situation appears largely similar to that which mngerhold (above) obtained after selecting 'IB' and the 'always...' option. In my case, however, running Brink's .reg fix did not immediately change anything. I was not able to reboot immediately, to see whether that would help. But I will return here after a reboot.

Double-clicking on one of these Internet Shortcut icons does produce a print dialog, as others have reported.

raywood said:

Double-clicking on one of these Internet Shortcut icons does produce a print dialog, as others have reported.

Obviously, this is because "Print" is at the top of the following context menu:



The following is my example, in which "Open" is at the top:

Sorry, I (or possibly the forum's software) put that last image in the wrong place. It should have appeared earlier, when I was talking about the menu.

When I say double-clicking on one of the Internet Shortcut icons produces a print dialog, I mean that it produces a print dialog (i.e., not a menu), like this:



That's the problem.

I ran FileTypesMan, sorted by Type Name, and scrolled down to Internet Shortcut. And you're right: it does provide useful information. Selecting Internet Shortcut in the upper pane reveals, in the lower pane, that there are three permissible (?) responses. The first is what one would expect: open with Firefox. It is labeled as the default. It is also marked as Disabled.

Right-clicking on that, in FileTypesMan, yields the option to Edit Selected Action. That choice opens a dialog with a checkbox for Disabled. Unchecking that box > OK produces a FileTypesMan error: "Error 5: Access is denied." Another right-click option is Open Action in RegEdit. That (on the second try) leads to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\InternetShortcut\shell\Open\Command, where the only item is (Default) with a value of "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "%1". That seems to be the Command-Line shown in FileTypesMan.

An attempt in FileTypesMan to add a replacement for that Firefox entry via right-click > New Action fails. Possibly I would have to delete the existing one before I could create a new one. Or possibly I lack permission for that as well. Not sure. I'm reluctant to delete the existing one if fixing it might be the better solution.

That feels like progress. I am stuck at a higher level, involving more important things. Seriously, thank you. At least I have a start into what's wrong. So far, my search on that question is fruitless.