Intro
This is information I assembled from a couple different sources. Sometimes you view your print queue, a job’s not printing for whatever reason, you delete it, it shows cancelled, but won’t go away. Am I right? Here’s what you can do short of rebooting (which I object to as the cure for everything on philosophical grounds).
The rough outline
You’re gonna have to stop the spooler, delete the spooled files and re-start the spooler.
The details
– Launch a CMD window by typing CMD in the run menu.
– right-click on the cmd icon that pops up, choose the option run as administrator
– in that window type:
net stop spooler |
You should see this output:
The Print Spooler service is stopping. The Print Spooler service was stopped successfully. |
– In Windows Explorer navigate to the folder
c:\windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS |
– delete all the files you find there – those are your stuck print jobs
– back in your CMD window type:
net start spooler |
You should see:
The Print Spooler service is starting. The Print Spooler service was started successfully. |
That’s it! If you re-launch your print queue view you should no longer see your stuck print jobs.
Conclusion
Annoyed by my own inability to delete print jobs I researched a time-saving way to do it without a dreaded reboot. Here I share what I’ve learned.