Access Denied message when changing printer port

I have just changed the IP address of my network shared printer. When I have done this in the past it has been straight forward but it looks like Server 2008 R2 had different plans for me

I went into the printer properties:

selected the ports tab and found the port I wanted to change:

Now, as I have done many times in the past I clicked “Configure Port” ready to enter the new IP only to be met with: “An error occurred during port configuration. Access is denied.”

Its the same for deleting the port. That seems very much like a UAC related error with me not being elevated, no worries I’ll just elevate myself – easy. Not quite, the run as administrator isn’t on the printer context menu:

and the normal trick of holding down Shift while right clicking doesn’t give additional options either.

Anyway, lets skip past the next 15mins of blank looks at the screen and I’ll give you the magic rune needed here, its annoyingly simple and looks like it will take you to the same dialog, but it is actually subtly different.

When you highlight the printer the explorer task bar context changes offering you options specific to that object. Click on the “Print Server Properties” button on the explorer task bar:

This takes you to an almost identical menu as the printer properties but has the all important elevate button on the ports page allowing you to make the change:

Hope that helps someone, it caught me out