Have you ever run into a situation where you sent a job to a printer, but it just refused to print? Are you checking the print queue, everything looks fine but nothing happens?
So, either nothing happens, or the print job fails and NORMALLY just disappears. Otherwise, you need to go to the print job queue and manually delete the print job, otherwise it will hold up any new jobs coming to the printer.
However, there are those few print jobs that do get stuck and just refuse to delete! You cancel, delete, or delete a print job, but it still remains in the queue. If you cannot delete a print job in Windows, you must completely stop the Print Spooler service, delete the print job, and then restart the service.
Manually remove the print job in Windows
Please note that when you stop the print spooler service and delete print jobs, you will have to delete ALL current print jobs as it is impossible to distinguish one print job from another.
Step 1. First go to Start, then Run and type services.msc. Scroll down to the Print Spooler service, right-click it and select Stop.
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Step 2: Now that the print spooler service is stopped, we need to go to the Windows folder where all the print jobs are spooled and delete them. Change to the following directory:
C: WINDOWS system32 spool PRINTERS
Delete everything inside this folder. DO NOT delete the folder itself, just everything in it. This will delete all print jobs currently in the print queue.
Step 3. Now return to the Services window, right-click on the Print Spooler service and select Start. Return to the print queue and refresh it. You should now see that all print jobs have been deleted and you can start printing again normally.
If you have a very important print job that is already in the queue for an outstanding print job, then deleting all jobs may not be for you. In this case, you can actually transfer the print queue to another printer and let it print all other jobs in the queue. I’ll write another post soon on how to do this. Enjoy!
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